


Ineffably

by SecretlyAnonymous



Series: Sacrifice [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A little, Angst, Asexual Pidge, Earth, F/M, M/M, OC, Some angst, Time Travel, Voltron, Who Knows?, demisexual keith, is lotor a good guy?, not me, probably other ships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-07-04 09:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15838338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretlyAnonymous/pseuds/SecretlyAnonymous
Summary: A pissed off Haggar sends the team back in time to a year before they find the blue lion. A complicated series of events prove that not all is as it seems on the surface.





	1. Where it all Began

Lance glared at the screen. Haggar had called them to let them know that she was winning the war. Naturally, she was wrong. All the way up until she revealed part of her plan. Not much of it, but enough to instill dread in Lance, and everyone else from the look of it.

She wanted Lotor back. Lance wasn’t very fond of Lotor, but he was an ally. Said ally didn’t want to go to Haggar, but he was willing to if it meant saving their lives. Allura had given Haggar a firm _No_ , and in response, Haggar had attacked their ship. Now, they had no defense system.

And she was still talking. “If you do not agree to my terms within five doboshes, I will send you back to where it all began,” She threatened. Lance wasn’t very sure what that meant, but it sounded bad. The connection cut and Haggar’s image blinked away.

Keith scowled. “There goes my news,” He said, “What do we do about this?”

Lotor glared at Allura. “You hand me over.” He said, as if it were obvious.

“No.” Shiro said. Hunk nodded in agreement.

Pidge spoke up, sending her own glare at Lotor. “We don’t always agree on everything, but this is nonnegotiable.”

“You must,” Lotor exclaimed.

“Absolutely not,” Allura shot back.

The argument descended into a shouting match between the six that Lance stayed out of, instead leaning towards Keith.

“So, you said good new and not-so-good news, I believe were your exact words.” He stared expectantly at Keith, who shifted and glanced at the doors.

“Yeah.” He said lowly. Lance waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“Tell me!” Lance demanded.

Keith pursed his lips, glanced at the door again and said, “I found my mother.”

Lance gasped dramatically. “Oh my god really? That’s awesome!”

Keith shifted his weight. “It’s really not. I don’t know what to do with her. Yeah, she’s my mother, and I’m glad I found her, but she abandoned me, Lance. How do I…?”

“Oh.” Lance said. “Yeah, that’s complicated. Where is she? The Marmora base?”

“My pod, actually,” Keith said, glancing at the door again. “I asked her to say there until I could explain everything to you guys.”

Lance shot another look at the arguing group, then gestured for Keith to lead the way.

He did. A few doboshes later, they stopped awkwardly in front of the pod. It opened from the inside, a Galra woman, who managed to look exactly like Keith, despite being purple, stepping out.

“Lance, this is Krolia, my….” Keith said. Lance held his hand out for her. Krolia didn’t look too upset that Keith was having trouble calling her his mother and grasped Lance’s hand.

“Lance,” She tested his name, then turned to Keith and said, “Is there a problem up there? It’s been a bit longer than two doboshes.”

“Haggar called us.” Keith said. Krolia looked at Keith weird, as if she didn’t know that they regularly got calls from bad guys trying to stop them. Well, she probably didn’t.

“She wants Lotor. Even if he’s suspicious, he’s still our ally.”

The castle shook.

“What was that?” Krolia asked. Lance looked at Keith wide eyed. “It’s been five doboshes. She’s attacking us.”

“We need to go –”

“Lance, Keith,” Allura’s voice came from the overcomms, “Stay where you are and hold on. She’s taken control of the castle and we don’t know where we’re headed. Put on your helmets, we may lose power, and you’ll want to conserve oxygen.”

They looked at each other wide-eyed, before Keith reached up and activated his mask. Lance turned to Krolia to see she had done so as well.

“Come here, Lance. It'll be safer in my pod.”

Lance nodded and put his helmet on, darting in as Krolia closed the door and activated the airlock.

“ _Lance, are you okay?”_ Shiro asked.

“I’m fine, Shiro. We’re in Keith’s pod. The door and the airlock’s closed.”

“ _Good, stay that way ‘till I say otherwise._ ”

Keith fired up the pod, keeping them on the ground. “Let’s hope we don’t die.”

The shaking escalated, and Lance was suddenly glad he had put the seat belt on.

 _Poor Allura_ , she must have been having trouble standing and steering from her spot in the bridge.

“ _SHIT!”_ Pidge shouted. “ _Allura’s fallen over and unconscious. She hit something on the way down, and we don’t know what!_ ”

“I can guess,” Keith muttered. Lance followed his gaze to find the castle’s door and airlock were open. A quick glance around and Lance found all the doors and airlocks on the bay open. The vacuum of space was stealing all of their air. He relayed the information to Pidge. “Does Coran have a suit?”

“ _Yeah, thank god._ ” Hunk said.

“Does Matt?”

 _“Yep,_ ” Hunk affirmed.

 _“Now we’re losing power.”_ Pidge informed them.

“Shit,” Keith muttered.

“What?”

“If power goes, then we won’t have any artificial gravity to keep us in here. We’ll get sucked out.”

Krolia didn’t say anything, just glared at the airlock.

There was shout over the comms, then Hunk exclaiming “ _Shiro!”_ Lance’s stomach dropped. Had Haggar done something to Shiro?

“Is he okay?” He asked.

“ _I don’t know_!” Allura shouted. Relief rushed through Lance that Allura was awake, but it quickly evaporated.

“ _I do_ ,” Lotor’s voice cut in, “ _I’ve seen the plans. The witch’s effects on his mind are being ripped away. It’s a long, painful process. You must get him to a healing pod.”_

“ _What do mean “effects on his mind”? Has she been controlling him or something?”_ Hunk fretted.

“ _Or something,_ ” Lotor muttered.

Lance felt the exact moment the gravity failed. The pod they were in flew out the nearest airlock, despite Keith’s attempts to keep it in the bay. Behind them, the doors shut.

“ _Are you guys okay?”_ Pidge asked, _“We got power back and closed the doors.”_

“Yeah. We’re fine, but we got sucked into space. We’ll try to follow you.”

They pulled up alongside the castle. “Keith, I think this is our Solar System.” Lance said.

“Haggar did tell us she’d send us back to where it all began.”

“But we can just leave. There must be something else.”

Keith was quiet for a minute, thinking. Krolia asked, “What happened to make this the place ‘where it all began’?”

Lance looked out the rear window. A very familiar planet hung in the void of space.

“We’re really close to Pluto.” He pointed, “Shiro, Matt, Pidge’s brother, and Sam Holt, Pidge’s dad, were kidnapped from one of Pluto’s moons, Kerberos, a couple of years ago.” Lance explained, then added, “We also found Blue on Earth one year ago.”

“Let’s go check out Kerberos. Haggar may have left us a present.” Keith said.

Krolia looked alarmed, but she didn’t try to stop them, so Lance gave Keith his consent. As they circled around Pluto to Kerberos, Lance informed Allura of what they were doing.

“We’ll send an update of what we see.” He finished, right as a Galra ship came into view.

Keith zoomed in on the surface of the planet. Lance’s stomach dropped. There were three figures running from the beam.

“Does anyone else get a bad feeling?” Keith asked. The beam picked up the figures.

“I am,” Lance said.

The ship appeared to have seen them, because it turned its beam on them. “I can’t pull out.” Keith tugged on the controls.

“It’s fine, we’ll get more information this way,” Krolia said.

“I don’t like this…” Lance said, clenching his jaw. The situation was giving a weird mix of emotions somewhere in the same pot as dread and premonitory fear. It wasn’t possible, but it seemed like it had. “Is time-travel possible?” He asked.

“No,” Keith immediately said, “Nope. I refuse.”

“But Keith,” Lance began, “Inter-reality travel isn’t possible either.”

Keith visibly gritted his teeth. Krolia made a questioning sound, so Lance explained, “After Shiro disappeared, when Keith was the leader, we found a rift in space. It led to another reality, something that should have been impossible. So, why not time-travel too?”

“I don’t like it.” Keith’s hands tightened around his controls.

“Looks like we don’t really have a choice.” Lance muttered to him.

Keith took a deep breath and calmed down. “Lance, when we dock, hide. We may be able to convince them we aren’t enemies, but they won’t take kindly to your presence. You’re our backup. Stay out of range of their blasters and follow us.”

Lance nodded, looking around the ship. There was a little nook on each side of the ship’s roof. He could hide there. Less than a dobosh later, Keith said, “Now,” and Lance pulled himself into one of the nooks. A tick later, Keith slid his knife into Lance’s hand.

The airlock opened to reveal two sentries. Keith and Krolia stood up with their hands in the air, not removing their masks.

When the four were out of sight, Lance crawled out of his nook. Knife in hand, he followed them out. It took only a minute for the sentries to arrive wherever they were going, and when Lance snuck in through the door, he saw why. From his vantage point of a support beam near the ceiling, he could see Keith and Krolia, the commander, Shiro, Matt, and Dr. Holt. In front of them, Zarkon was speaking. Krolia was spinning a tale of escaping rebels who had taken their ship to convince Zarkon not to kill them.

Then Shiro (Past Shiro? Younger Shiro?)  appeared to wake, his head turning both directions. Lance didn’t know what happed the first time, but now, Shiro saw the two newcomers and kept quiet.

“You wouldn’t mind proving your tale to be true, would you?” The commander asked.

Krolia responded gracefully, “Of course not. What do I need to do?”

“Remove your mask,” He commanded.

Krolia reached up and pressed something under her ear. The mask dissolved. The man seemed appeased, but Zarkon was not. “Your son too,” He insisted.

That was bad.

Lance lined up a shot.

Keith reached up to his mask.

“Keith?” Shiro exclaimed.

Lance took the shot.

The console showing Zarkon’s face exploded into sparks, Zarkon flickering out of existence.

If only he would.

The commander raised his gun in Lance’s direction, the sentries and guards following, dropping Matt and Sam, who woke upon impact with the ground. Lance could see the gears spinning in their brains as they took in the situation. Lance took out all the guards before jumping down into the battle. His rifle became a blaster, and Lance took out two sentries before getting the chance to cut Keith free with his sword. He immediately turned around and blocked a blast as he slipped Keith his Marmora blade.

Lance took out the sentry behind him, then jumped in between Matt and a blast, taking a hit to the side. Matt squealed “ _Holy shit!”_ as Lance’s side erupted into flames. Still, he turned around, ready to decapitate the sentry that got him, only to find Keith had done it for him. The other one was on the ground, sparking.

Aliens!” Matt squealed again, as Lance was cutting him free. “ _Huge ass, motherfucking purple cat aliens abducted us!_ ”

Dr. Holt’s jaw went slack as he realized, yes, in fact, he had been abducted by aliens. Krolia glared at Matt and said, “Your voice hurts my ears. Also, I take offence to that. I am in no way related to those _beasts._ ”

Keith cocked his head. “We should probably contact the castle, or check for other prisoners.”

Shiro stared at him, “Keith? What are you doing out here? What’s going on?”

“Shiro, calm down. We don’t really know. We’re going to figure it out.”

Krolia scoffed. “Honestly. How do you figure out time-travel?”

Lance glared at her. “You’re going to push Keith away before you get to know him, you know. And we’ll figure out time-travel the same way we figured out inter-reality traveling.”

“What?” She asked. Lance shrugged. “I mean, it only took us about thirty minutes to realize that the Altea Empire in the other reality was evil.”

“Go ahead and check for prisoners, Keith. I think the castle’s been listing in, so we shouldn’t need to fill them in.”

“ _Yeah you do. I’ve only been able to your side of things, Lance, so like…. WHAT?”_ Hunk asked.

“Umm…” Lance glanced Keith, who shrugged.

“We have traveled back in time. Roughly two years.”

 _“Oh…”_ Pidge breathed. “ _Should we prepare for anything?”_

Lance shrugged and said, “Yeah. Prepare for the Kerberos crew.”

“ _OH!_ ” Pidge squeaked, then continued to say, “ _Oh, Lance just told me we’ve been sent back in time and need to prepare for a younger version of you.”_

Lance assumed she wasn’t talking to him.

“Shit. Lance, you blew out the security. We have to go check for prisoners manually.” Keith said.

Lance cursed. His wound hadn’t lessened at all, and he had been hoping not to have to do any work until he got to a healing pod.

He must have done something, because Keith’s eyes drifted to the injury, just below Lance’s ribs, and rushed over. “What are you doing Lance? Sit down or something!”

Lance tried to shove him off, but Keith held on tight and steered Lance over to the commander’s chair. “Get one of the other paladins over here. Not Allura, she’s hurt and doesn’t need other problems on top of steering the castle with her… concussion? Why-ever she feel unconscious, so…”

Lance rolled his eyes and flipped Keith off, who raised an eyebrow. “Did Shiro not make me leader in his absence? And is he not absent?”

Lance gestured to Shiro, who was watching with wide eyes. Matt was sitting next to him clutching his arm.

Keith snorted. “Our Shiro. The one with a bionic arm and white hair and scars.”

There was a choking sound. Lance glanced over to find that Shiro was the one choking, and both Matt and Dr. Holt were pounding on his back. “Y’know, you could have revealed that to them better.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Just do it, doofus.”

 _“Revealed what?”_ Pidge asked.

“What our Shiro has been through to this timeline’s Shiro. We’re gonna need you and Hunk to come over. I’m injured and Keith won’t let me do anything. He’s pulling the “Shiro made me substitute leader” thing.”

Pidge snorted. Hunk made an affirmative noise, indicating that he’d been eavesdropping, so Lance assumed they were on their way.

“Right, I’m going to go start checking out the cells.” Keith said, “Lance, guard this place. Krolia?”

Krolia nodded and picked up her blaster, heading towards the door. Keith followed her out, leaving Lance alone with Shiro and the Holts.

“Soo…” Lance began, “Anything I can do for you?”

“Can you tell us what’s going on?” Sam asked.

Lance contemplated. “Obviously. Just give me a minute.”

Unfortunately, Lance found himself unable to explain what was happening.

“I mean, besides what’s obvious? I’m going to need more specific questions.”

“Who’s coming? I heard “Hunk”, but…”

Lance nodded. “Two of my team.”

Matt sat up, “Who’s your team?”

“It’s me, Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Allura, and Coran, officially.”

“Pidge?” Matt focused on, while Shiro asked, “Who’s unofficial?”

Lance frowned. “Um... there’s us six, Keith, Keith’s mom, _probably_ , Lotor, you two,” Lance gestured to the Holts, “Ryner, Ryner’s planet Olkarion, Shay, Shay’s family, Shay’s Balmera, the Coalition, the Blade of Marmora, Bi-oh-Bi, Bi-oh-Bi’s planet, literally everyone in the alliance. That’s like tens of trillions of people, honestly.”

Shiro looked overwhelmed, like he regretted asking.

Lance took pity on him and continued, “If I just go by the leaders though, there’s only a few dozen or a hundred. There are a couple of representatives from every planet and group. Bu- _ut_ … we’ve traveled back in time, so all of that has been erased.” Lance looked down, dread pooling in his gut.

“Now, the official team probably consists of those that came back in time. Me, Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Shiro, Keith, Coran, Lotor, Matt, and Krolia,” He counted them off on his fingers. “Us ten.”

“Oh nice,” Shiro said. There was a sound from outside the door, sending Lance into high-alert. “Each of you, pick up a gun.” He whispered.

Footsteps faded, as if the rest of the crew on the ship was unaware of what had happened in the control room. Not long after, there was a rattling noise from the vents. Lance pointed his blaster at the opening, though he suspected it was Pidge.

Sure enough, the grate clattered to the ground, revealing a green and white figure.

“Hey, Lance, what’s up?” She said, removing her helmet. Pidge completely ignored the other three others in the room, instead getting on her knees to check out the console Lance had blown to bits.

She whistled, “What on earth did you do to this?”

“I shot it,” Lance gave her a blank look, “We just need to know if there are other prisoners on this ship. I also thought maybe we could use the air in here to replenish the castle.” Pidge nodded and crawled back into the console until only her butt could be seen.

Dr. Holt (Lance was going to call him that until told otherwise) gaped. Lance raised an eyebrow at him, a laugh nearly bubbling out of him. From what he knew of the man from the few days he’d been with them, Dr. Holt had a spirit and curiosity that two years in work camps and what basically amounted to slavery could dampen. Little could take him by surprise, but there he was, gaping at his own daughter.

There was a sparking sound, followed by a clatter and, “Ow! _Fuck_!”

A second later, Pidge announced, “Alrighty. I have no clue what to do. Hunk probably would, but I’m the only one small enough to fit in here, so I’m going to electrocute it and hope that works.”

Lance snorted, ignoring the flare of pain in his side.

“Is that a good idea?” Dr. Holt asked.

“Best idea we have,” Pidge said, acknowledging her father for the first time. “I have learned to read this stuff a little, but it’s only been a year and I have a lot more on my plate than language learning. Electrocuting it usually works though. The Empire uses quintessence for energy, so electricity either boosts it or kills it.”

Lance watched Pidge as she wiggled. The console sparked, veins of electricity running across it. Nothing happened. “Whelp, it’s dead.” Pidge muttered, kicking it. She ran her hand across it, yelping when it lit up. Lance’s jaw dropped.

“Um… What?” He spluttered. Pidge didn’t answer him as her face went from shock to awe. She almost didn’t notice her glasses falling off her face, only pushing them up at the last minute.

“It felt like how, on Olkarion, I could interact with nature with the headset things, but different…” She told Lance, picking up her bayard. It became her normal electricity grappler thing, but then it changed, becoming a spear. She hefted it, testing its weight. “Well,” She began, “I have no clue how to use this, but cool.”

Lance wanted to jump, his injury reminding him not to just in time. “Oh my god, Pidge. What just happened?”

She grinned at him, eyes alight. “I have an idea,” was all she said, before touching the floor. For a minute, nothing happened, but then Pidge smiled. Lance imagined that her eyes would be flaming if they were open; as it was, she had closed them moments after she touched the floor.

“I can _control technology!”_ She whisper-yelled, dancing around the room.

That moment, Hunk came over the comms, asking for an update. Lance smiled, getting the chance to brag. “Pidgey has developed the ability to control technology like the Olkari!” He stated proudly.

“ _Oh my god cool!”_ Hunk shouted. Lance shushed him, “Do you want to the Galra to know you’re there?”

Lance could almost feel Hunk’s shrug. “Lotor is here,” He said, “Say hello Lotor!”

There was a quiet, unimpressed _hello_ in Lotor’s unmistakable voice. Lance snorted again. He could imagine Lotor’s tolerance of Hunk eroding away; once they had settled into Lotor’s presence a little, Hunk had taken to questioning him much the same way he’d questioned “Galra Keith”.

“Hey Hunk, Lotor. How’re you guys doing?”

“Oh y’know, we’re fine. Its not like we know where we’re going or anything.” Hunk said.

Lance smiled brightly and clapped loud enough for the microphone in his helmet to pick up. “Oh no, we don’t know where you’re going either. I blew out some important security stuff, but Pidge seems to have a grasp on her new techy powers, so who knows?”

Pidge put her helmet back on now that she didn’t need to climb through anything small. “Don’t worry about it, Hunk. Just head back to your lion and prepare to take care of injured prisoners.”

She put her hand back on the ground, grinning maniacally. “I’ve just sent commands to every sentry and drone to take out the galra aboard this ship and free the prisoners.”

Lance smiled for a minute, but then he remembered Krolia. “Wait, we have a Blade Member here. The female galra with Keith is safe.”

Pidge nodded. “Alright, fixed that. I’m going to begin heading to the castle. Allura, have you been listening?”

_“Yes. Should I be anticipating the lions or the galra ship?”_

“The galra ship. Lance figures we can replenish our oxygen supplies with it.”

 _“Okay, I’ll see you soon_.”

Pidge began steering the ship back around Pluto. Lance looked over at the other three, wondering why they hadn’t been speaking, only to find them in shock. That wasn’t good. He stood up to sit next to them, and winced at the pain in his side, then stumbling when it got worse. The fire that had been localized to the open wound spread. Too late, Lance realized what had happened. It spread up his side to encompass his whole torso. The blackness was already encroaching.

“Pidge, I think I’ve been poisoned.” He said, then his vision went black.

Lance woke up to the nauseating feeling of exiting the healing pod.

Pidge was there in the corner, typing away at her computer, Hunk helping her out with whatever it was they were doing, but Keith was who Lance focused on. He was standing back, letting Lance get his balance, but he was there.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Hunk said, abandoning Pidge, who squawked.

“Yep,” Lance said, eyeing Keith. Keith tilted his head down the hallway that lead to their hideaway. Maybe they’d be putting to more use; after he’d shown it to Keith the week before, he realized that they were never together, and thus would never use it, and he’d realized how stupid he was. But Keith hadn’t said anything, so Lance didn’t either, and now, with all the new developments, who knew?

Lance nodded back, and turned to Hunk: “Where’s everyone else? Why was my injury bad enough to warrant a healing pod?”

Hunk answered the first question, “Allura and Coran took them to the lounge to explain what we knew. Matt’s there as living proof. The other Blade member is hiding. I don’t think she’s comfortable being stuck here with us.”

Yeah, Lance couldn’t blame her.

If Allura was still explaining the situation, then that meant that he hadn’t been in the pod very long. “So, um… do we know why I passed out?”

“Slow acting poison,” Keith said, “It basically weakens you until you pass out, but I think you didn’t notice because you weren’t doing anything that would require energy.”

Keith’s face was pinched.

“Well, I’m fine now,” Lance said, hoping to relieve the tension, “Why don’t we go visit the others.”

Keith nodded. Hunk forced Pidge up and they made the two-minute trek to the lounge, where they found the younger versions of the people they knew, sitting in silence.

“Are they okay?” Keith asked Allura, who shrugged.

“Probably. I imagine they’re overwhelmed.”

“No shit.” Matt (the younger one) said. “I mean, giant lions. Defending the universe?”

Lance shrugged. “I mean, yeah, but you get used to it after a while.”

Matt sat back on the couch, while his older self sat forward. “Well, as much as they need to adjust, we need to work on a plan. Today’s date is March fifth, so we need to know how long we have until the Garrison starts spitting their shit. Pidge, Keith, do you remember the dates you were informed of the mission failure?”

Pidge crossed her legs, looking down at her computer keyboard. “Four days…” She guessed, “I think the message arrived on the ninth, but I can’t remember. Just that suddenly, the world had stopped making sense.”

Matt looked at Pidge with little heart eyes, cooing “Aww!” as Keith shook his head; “It was three for me, but that’s because I was right there in the Garrison.”

Hunk nodded. “We have three days to prevent Keith from getting expelled in this timeline. How are we going to talk to the Garrison?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey to Earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a slow chapter.

The video began zoomed in on Pidge’s face. She glared at the camera, sniffed, and pushed her glasses up on her nose. Then, with a completely serious face, she said, “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”

“What?” Keith’s astonished voice came from off camera, “Can’t you be serious?”

Pidge glared behind the camera. “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”

Lance snorted, then heard his own voice say, “Dude, you gotta play along. Lysosomes are the suicide organelles.”

“Death.” Keith said.

Pidge shrugged, “I’ll take it.” She clapped her hands, “So, you’re probably wondering what this is. This is a video explaining what happened to the Kerberos Mission.”

Pidge reached off screen and grabbed Matt.

“Umm…” He said, wide eyed, “We were abducted by evil aliens and then saved by nicer aliens.”

Lance heard himself snort offscreen. Matt bristled, “What, it’s true!”

“I know it is, but it sounds hilarious when you put it like that.”

Matt rolled his eyes and turned back to the camera. “So, we’re coming back, please don’t tell anyone we’re dead.”

The screen shut down, and Lance turned to face Dr. Holt, who crossed his arms and said, “We’re not sending that to Earth.”

Pidge shrugged. “Too late. We’ve already sent it.”

They waited for him to blow up to cackle, at which point Dr. Holt gave them the stink eye.

“So, we really just sent them a heads-up that we were coming. “First contact” and all that bull.”

Dr. Holt nodded. “How long to we have?”

Hunk stoked his chin. “They probably already know we’re here. You know, giant entity in their solar system and stuff. We’ll be at Earth in less than six hours, and we should be good to go.”

 

 

Lance didn’t focus much on the trip to Earth. Hunk said they had six hours until they reached Earth, so that meant Lance had six hours to do whatever he wanted. And he wanted to cuddle with his boyfriend.

Who wasn’t his boyfriend. Technically. Yet.

Either way, Lance tracked Keith down and dragged him to the room.

Their room?

They sat together for five minutes before Lance asked, “Does coming back in time change anything?”

Keith shrugged. “Depends. Do you want it to?”

“Yeah,” Lance breathed out the word, and Keith turned to look at him.

“Well, before we agreed not to be together because a: we were in the middle of a war, and b: we were rarely in the same area, usually light-years apart.”

Lance hummed in agreement.

“Well, I don’t plan on going back to the Blade.”

Lance stiffened. “Really?” He couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.

Keith twisted his body to face Lance fully, smirking. “Nope. I liked it better than I would have felt here being useless, but when I think about it… somehow, I don’t think you guys would let me be useless.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Lance agreed quietly.

“Also,” Keith began, then hesitated, “Also, the Blade has a mission over individual rhetoric. I don’t really like the feeling of being…. I don’t know. I just… I stopped liking it after a while.”

“Well, I’m glad you realized how fucking stupid everything with the Blade was. They were allies, but I didn’t like Kolivan.”

Keith chuckled. “It’s just down to the war. Do we really want to complicate our lives even more by starting a relationship?”

Lance snorted. “Do you honestly think that we’ll be able to stick to any plan that we make?”

Keith let his head thump onto Lance’s chest. “No.” He muttered.

Lance curled his arms around Keith. “Then why try?”

Keith laughed, trying to stifle it in Lance’s chest before giving up and just letting it loose.

Lance felt his jaw drop. He’d seen Keith happy, he’d seen Keith smiling, but he’d never seen him laugh so freely.

“I would love to, but I’m scared.” Keith muttered, frowning. Lance mourned the smile, “There’s the whole thing with Krolia, and I really, really like you, but I don’t know…”

Keith flopped back onto Lance’s chest, this time letting all of his weight loose. Lance _ooghf_ -ed and fell against the armrest.

Keith heaved, his hip pressing uncomfortably digging into Lance’s thigh.

“It’s okay,” Lance hummed. “We don’t have to do anything if you’re not comfortable with it.”

Relief washed over Keith’s face. “Thank god. Sorry, but…”

“Hey,” Lance soothed, “I get it. You have abandonment issues you need to work through and me pressuring you won’t help. We’ll take this at your pace.”

Keith sighed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome! On the bright side, we can play pranks on the others.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Lance pursed his lips. “Do one-eighties so often they get whiplash. Go from great friends to mortal enemies in seconds.”

Keith giggled. Lance took the chance to go on with all his prank ideas, Keith laughing against his chest with every new half thought out plan. Within only a few hours, the two of them were beginning to fall asleep, still on top of each other.

Lance adjusted his side to fit with Keith.

“God it’s like that night I kissed you all over again.” Keith muttered.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ve punched you yet.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “If you ever hit me again, excluding training, I will break up with you.”

“Noted, and, I would like to say, it goes both ways. Although, I’ll give you one punch so we’re even. Use it wisely.”

Lance paused, just hiding his face in Keith’s hair, because Keith hadn’t bothered to move, before he realized what Keith had said.

“We’re not dating yet, but I get what you’re saying.”

“So? I kind of did promise that even if we’re not dating yet, I’m yours for as long as you’re mine.”

The pot in Lance’s chest swelled and overflowed. Lance sat up and pressed a kiss to Keith’s lips. One of Keith’s hands made its way into Lance’s hair, gripping tightly.

Then Lance giggled, and they broke apart. “My gosh, you have no idea how happy I am.”

Keith smiled wryly. “I may be able to guess.”

 

 

 

Lance passed by the kitchen to hear Pidge shout, “YOU PRONOUNCE IT MAY-MAY?”

He stuck his head in to find an angry Pidge and Keith (whatever emotion he was feeling, it was well hidden).

“What’s a may-may?”

Pidge went back to angrily clacking at her keyboard, so Lance turned to Keith. “It’s those little pictures that represent emotions and sometimes move?”

Lance’s eyebrows raised. “A meme?”

Pidge’s head shot back up. “It is not pronounced “m-ee-m”.” She declared. “It is meh-meh.”

“No,” Lance shook his head. “Absolutely not. May-may is preferable to meh-meh.”

Pidge narrowed her eyes, setting her computer aside, standing on the table where it used to be. There was a two-inch height difference between her and Lance. “I will fight you.”

Then she made a small noise in the back of her throat. “How you pronounce gif?”

Lance stiffened. “It is _j_ if, thank you very much. J-sound.”

Pidge turned to Keith, but he said, “Jif,” as well.

Lance wasn’t sure if it was good or bad luck that Shiro – the younger one – passed by the door right then. On one hand, Pidge never reacted to Keith’s pronunciation of gif, but on the other hand, her eyes light up with a devilish fire. “Shiro!” She called.

He looked up, heading into the kitchen. Pidge typed a couple words onto her computer. “How do you pronounce these words?”

Shiro’s eyes furrowed. “Meme.”

He pronounced it the way Lance did.

“Jif,” He said, reading gif.

Pidge calmly put her computer down, picked up her plate of food goo, and, with an inhuman screech, chucked it at Shiro.

Lance got out of there as fast as he could, Keith right behind him. They ran into Hunk in the bridge. “Oh, hey guys!” He clapped them both on the shoulders. “We’re almost there, just a couple more minutes. I was just about to go looking for you.”

Lance nodded, stepping forward to his chair. “Let’s go meet Iverson. Again.”


	3. No joke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Politicians are assholes, the team does some interesting things.

The meeting started off pretty good. Iverson still had both eyes, and it seemed that bringing back the Kerberos crew got them the goodwill of America, at least.

Until halfway through the meeting, where one of the ‘politicians’ grabbed Pidge and held a gun to her head.

A little context: All the humans were wearing their respective helmets/masks for the sake of identity preservation. All of the Kerberos crew’s families were there, which wasn’t much: Katie, aka Pidge’s younger self, her mother, Shiro’s mother, grandparents, and Keith. The Garrison had invited a couple of trusted reporters and politicians representing the president or something, totaling five more people. Pidge, Hunk, Keith, and Lotor were on one side of the table, and Lance, Allura, Coran, Krolia, and Matt were on the other.

Lance automatically reached for his blaster, but he realized it wouldn’t do any good. The best protection Pidge had was her helmet, which may not be strong enough to take a bullet point-blank.

Until Coran teleported to the man and grabbed his wrist.

That wasn’t a joke.

Coran was on one side of the table, Pidge was on the other. Then, somehow, Coran was on Pidge’s side with his hand wrapped around the man’s wrist.

Coran narrowed his eyes at the man. “Let go of her.”

The man tightened his hand on the trigger.

“What do you want?” Lance asked, trying to diffuse the situation. He swore he was turning into Shiro.

“Our DNA scanners picked up on eight human presences, not three, like they should have. What are you?”

Allura stepped forward. “Most of us are human, yes.” She agreed, “What we have been through is incredible, and we only wished to protect them.”

The man gestured with his elbow. “Reveal yourselves.”

Lance hesitated, glancing at the others. Nothing happened for thirty seconds, then Keith stepped forward.

He deactivated his mask, rebelliously sticking his chin in the air. There was a gasp from everyone who didn’t already know everything.

Keith stared the man down, clearly demanding the man “Let her go.”

He didn’t.

Hunk revealed himself next with a resounding, “Let her go.”

Lance narrowed his eyes, pulling his helmet off, watching Iverson’s eyes widen at two of his current students. “Let her go.”

The man looked at Matt, who was gripping his staff had enough that Lance thought it might break. He touched the orange mark on his neck, and Matt’s mask retreated. He glowered at the politician, “Let my sister go.”

Lance saw the man’s limbs go slightly slack in shock. Everyone in the room gasped again.

Coran must have noticed it too, because he jerked the man’s hand towards him, hoping to remove the gun.

There was a _boom_. Katie shrieked, and Pidge fell to the ground, cursing.

Coran reeled back, but immediately fixed himself to fight the man. Hunk got there first. The man flew back, his feet lifting off the ground. Keith was bending down next to Pidge, who had gone quiet.

Keith lifted Pidge’s helmet off her head, the front visor shattered. “Well shit.”

There was a lot of blood, streaming from below her left eye and her nose. Pidge looked up angrily, letting Keith pick the glass from the wound. The tip of her nose was gone.

Coran was sitting next to them, quietly assuring Pidge that her nose would grow back in the healing pod, and Matt had run around the table to crouch with them too.

Lance watched Matt reach into his cloak out of the corner of his eye, focusing more on the man, who was just gaining consciousness.

Pidge swiped her hand across her face, smudging blood from her cheek wound across her nose, then Matt grabbed her hand.

“Stop. You’ll get it infected.” The box he’d pulled out of his cloak turned out to be a first aid kit; it would probably be useful if the castle wasn’t right outside the door. Still, he cleaned up the blood and wiped the wounds with alcohol wipes. “C’mon, let’s get you to a healing pod.”

“One moment,” Pidge said. She calmly put her helmet down and turned to the man who shot her. “ _I’m going to kill you!”_

She summoned her bayard, but instead of the usual small green grappling hook, it took the form of a spear. Barbed, cackling with electricity. Pidge took a moment to admire it.

The man scurried back, hampered by the fact that he was still on the ground. He was bleeding everywhere from Hunk’s punch – Lance thought he must have bit his tongue or something.

Pidge advanced, dragging the spear as if she were in some kind of horror movie. Matt stopped her. “You can’t kill him.”

Pidge narrowed her eyes. “Fine. I won’t.”

Then she twisted out of Matt’s grip and placed the spear on the man’s throat. “I think it’s important that you know that you just pissed off the most dangerous people in the universe.”

She backed off to sit in her seat. Matt followed with his med kit and bandaged her face.

Lance turned to the room and asked, “Can I kill him now?”

It seemed to break everyone out of their stupor, with Keith actually tackling Lance, shouting “Absolutely not!”

Iverson grabbed the guy and tied him up, while motioning for one of the other teachers there to do something. Lance hoped they were calling the police.

The Paladins sat down, letting the Garrison take care of the man, and Lance relaxed in his seat, exhausted. Why did the universe hate them so much?

_“What the hell just happened?”_

Lance looked up to see Pidge’s ( _Katie’s_ ) mom freaking out, and Dr. Holt trying to calm her down.

“Do you know what’s going on?” She asked her husband. He winced.

“Why did you tell me? What just happened?”

The other fifteen people in the room were shouting as well. The noise was growing and growing – Sanda, in particular, was threatening the reporters with death if anything that had just happened got out. At the top of her lungs.

With wide eyes, Lance watched as Lotor got more and more fed up, especially after Allura’s attempts to calm everyone down failed. Finally, he stood up, slammed his hands on the table, and shouted, “ _Shut up!”_

The lights flickered, then went out.

When they came back on, everyone was standing still, quiet. Coran was rubbing his head like he had a headache.

“Thank you,” Lotor said, sitting back down.

Allura stepped forward, drawing attention to herself. “We will answer any questions you have, but please, be calm about it, and wait until after I’m done.”

She took a deep breath. “We were sent back in time by our enemies in an attempt to leave us unable to fight back, while they collected their wits and launched an attack. Our situation is very complicated and very sensitive, and we are still attempting to understand it.”

Sanda narrowed her eyes. “Time-travel?”

Lance nodded. “Time-travel. Lemme tell you; it’s not fun. Not fun at all.” He wagged his finger. “Nauseating, for one –”

Allura cut him off. “Yes, time-travel. Lance is correct. We have determined that our enemies sent us back in an attempt to leave us leaderless and floundering while they gathered their forces.”

“Oh nice,” Lance said.

Sanda didn’t say anything, but one of the other teachers asked, “Should we get your younger selves? Or would that be detrimental?”

Allura shrugged. “It’s up to Lance and Hunk. Everyone else is already here.”

Lance nodded. “Haggar will probably attempt to kill them – hit us where it hurts. It’s probably best if they have some warning or something.”

Hunk nodded along, flexing his hand as if it hurt. Maybe it did. He _did_ hit a man hard enough to lift him off his feet.

Another teacher left the room.

“Why don’t we take a break to let you guys get used to the idea of time-travel? We can talk again when younger Lance and Hunk arrive,” Allura suggested.

Lance closed his eyes as he relaxed, hoping no one would bother him. He felt a presence next to him and opened an eye to find Keith in the closest chair, resting his head in his arms.

“Hey,” He muttered.

“Hey, Keith responded.

They sat there for a couple of seconds until someone approached them. “Was that really me?”

Lance opened an eye again to find Katie standing there, fidgeting nervously. He sighed and sat up. “Yep. She goes by Pidge, though, so we shouldn’t have a problem telling the two of you apart.”

“And you’re not worried about her?”

Lance shook his head. “She’s been through worse. We all have.”

Katie’s eyes widened. “Like what?”

Lance chuckled. “I’ve got a scar on my back from an explosion I was in. We didn’t even know the scar was there until weeks later.”

“Oh. Really? Can I see?”

Lance shook his head. “I’d have to take off my armor to show you.”

She drooped, “Aww.”

Keith rolled his eyes, “I have one I can show you.” He shrugged off the hood and pulled his top down to his chest, revealing the nasty shoulder scar.

“How’d you get that?” She asked, reaching out to touch it. Keith shrugged.

“Blade of Marmora.”

She blinked, and Keith began to explain the Blade of Marmora, using Krolia as an example, but he didn’t get very far. The teacher walked back into the room with younger Lance and Hunk behind her – Lance asking, “What do you mean we need to get our families?”

The teacher placated him with, “I don’t know if we need to, we’re going to talk to those who do.” She gave a sweeping gesture and the two actually looked at the others in the room. Lance grinned at his younger self, whose jaw dropped.

Younger Hunk’s eyes widened, and he nervously asked, “Why do they look like us? What’s going on?”

Lance grinned, rolling his eyes playfully. “I’m you from the future.”

Younger him frowned. “Nah-uh I don’t believe you.”

Lance shot back, “You better.”

They were about to get into a competitive argument, but Allura stopped them. “We are from the future, he’s just being a quiznacker.” She shot him a dirty look.

“Ooh harsh.” He glared back, “I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”

The staring contest lasted five seconds before they both burst into giggles.

“Please explain.” The younger him demanded.

Lance barely heard him, stomach hurting from giggling. Maybe he was going insane? It would be so unbelievable.

It only took a few seconds to get his lungs under control again, and he found Keith was explaining things to his younger self.

“We can prove it true.”

Younger Lance was looking at them suspiciously, younger Hunk wringing his hands behind him, glancing around the room.

“I think they’re telling the truth.” He said. Younger Lance turned to him, astonished look on his face, until Hunk pointed out the window, right at the castle.

“Whoa.”

Keith turned to Lance and made a face. Lance responded by shouldering him, “What?” he asked quietly.

Keith rolled his eyes. “Be serious.” He muttered. Lance grinned at him, “Allura wasn’t being serious.”

“Allura’s always serious. She’s allowed to giggle every now and then.”

Lance stuck his tongue out at Keith. “And I’m the one who made her laugh.”

Younger Lance turned back to the group. “So, you’re serious? You really are from the future?”

Allura had calmed down much faster than Lance and answered, “Yes. Like Keith said, it was an attack on us. We really need to go, but they will likely try to hit where it hurts. For most of us, that’s here. So, we need to be able to defend you.”

“Whoa. Cool.”

Lance’s eyebrows rose. He knew he used to be enamored with the idea of fighting a war – honor, glory, badassery – and to be honest, he still kind of was, but they’d just told his younger self that aliens were coming to kill him and his family.

Wow, Lance used to be so stupid.

Well, that was a little mean. He could admit that a year of constant war may have caused him to mature faster than he would have otherwise.

Keith raised an eyebrow beside him. “Not cool. If we don’t find a way to protect Earth, everyone’s going to die. You are just more at risk because of your connection to us.”

“Oh.”

Lance smiled grimly at him younger self. “Welcome to our lives for the past year.”

Younger him asked, “So when will our families get here?”

Younger Hunk looks up at the question. “Are they even coming? You said they’re in danger – that means they’re coming right?”

Iverson nodded. “They’ll need a while to get ready, but we can have them here within the week. How should I word this email?”

Keith shook his head. “A week is too long. In that amount of time, the Galra could attack and wipe out the Earth. We need them here by the end of today. Then we can make a plan to get them and the rest of Earth safe.”

“Call them,” Younger Hunk suggested. “Have them gather in an unpopulated area nearby, and we can go pick them up.”

Allura nodded. “That’s a good idea. The lions can get there within minutes, so as long as we give them enough time to get ready, it won’t take more than a couple of vargas.”

At Iverson’s blank look, Lance explained, “Hours. A couple of hours. And only allow family to come, Rachel’s boyfriend is a jackass and I’m okay with it if he dies.”

Younger Lance frowned. “But Dean’s so nice.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “He raped Rachel, then intimidated her into marrying him. Did you know that? She’s going to get out of there, then he’s going to go nuts and show up at the house with a gun.”

Younger Lance’s mouth dropped. “What? Why?”

Lance thought for a minute. “I believe that the explanation he gave the court was that as his wife, it was her duty to fulfill his every wish? Yeah, he was convicted of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree sexual assault and got like thirty-five years in prison.”

“What – murder? He didn’t…? Did he?”

“No, he didn’t hurt Rachel.”

Younger Lance furrowed his eyebrows. “But then… who did he hit?”

“Me.”

There was a moment of silence, then:

“Oh, how nice.”

“Shut up, Keith.”

“No-no, it explains a lot.”

“I will hit you.”

Younger Lance cut in, “What?”

Lance grinned at his younger self. “It wasn’t bad, don’t worry about it. Besides, we can prevent it from happening this time around.”

Iverson held up his hand. “I’m going to make the call now.”

“Make sure to tell them that Dean Growstone isn’t allowed to come!”

It was about five minutes after Iverson got off the phone with Lance’s mother that Shiro wandered in.

“He’s awake!” Keith muttered.

Shiro nodded. “Yup. I’m awake. Finally.”

Hunk leaned forward and asked, “Do you know what happened?”

Shiro shook his head. “Just that we’re on Earth. How’d that hap–” His eyes went wide upon seeing the younger versions of everyone. “What’s happening?”

Lance leaned forward and said, without any infliction, “We’ve been sent to another dimension in which there exist infinite numbers of all of us.”

There was a snort from the other side of the room, and Shiro leaned forward as well, getting into Lance’s space. “No, we haven’t.”

Keith tilted his head. “You know, I might actually have believed that?”

Shiro gaped at him. “Why?”

“Did we never tell you about the time we dimension hopped and found a universe where Allura was evil?”

“No.”

“Huh.”

There was a pause, then Lance said, “But seriously, we have been sent back in time.”

With Shiro awake, things went faster – he was trained in leadership under the Garrison, and he was human, so the Garrison payed more attention to his point of view and offerings.

Once Shiro had been given the rundown of the situation and his input given (mostly the same things Allura said, but this time, Iverson bothered to listen, and Lance wasn’t sure if it was xenophobia or sexism that caused him to blow off Allura), they moved on to other subjects to blow of the remaining time they had.

“Okay,” Hunk said, “We should probably talk about our game plan, because Haggar has likely told Zarkon of Lotor’s betrayal, and probably of other planets in the coalition, and we need to like speed it up as much as possible.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, thankfully as Lance processed everything Hunk said.

 Coran appeared to be taking notes. Matt looked over his shoulder. “Why can I read that?”

“What?”

“Your notes,” Matt said, “I can read them. And I’m pretty sure you don’t know written English.”

Coran shook his head. He wrote something down on his paper. “Can you read this?”

Matt looked at the paper and nodded.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Coran muttered. Allura looked at the paper as well, asked, “What does it say?”

“’My name is Coran,’” Matt said, “You can’t read it?”

“No,” Coran answered for her. “It’s a language that died out hundreds of years before either I or Allura were born. I only know it because my duties as Advisor meant that I needed to learn all of Altea’s history, and most of that was written in native languages until the planet united and formed a singular culture.”

“Why wasn’t it just translated?” Shiro asked.

“Much of it wasn’t translatable, and even if it was, we wanted to preserve the history of our people as best we could, and learning their languages was a good way to do that.”

It looked like they were about to launch into a discussion of their own, so Lance cut in with, “As interesting as that it, Coran, it still doesn’t answer the question of why Matt can read it.”

Coran sank into his chair, thinking, then leaned forward and put his head in his arms again, still looking like he was in pain.

Lotor hesitantly spoke up a couple doboshes later. “When I was going through Haggar’s notes, I saw something about a theory that a quintessence overload could cause the development of… loosely put: abilities. But if that’s what’s happening, then where and when did Matt get exposed?”

Coran gaped at Lotor. “Those were just rumors ten-thousand years ago. Did she find proof?”

“Well, the theories were the basis for her experiments that resulted in the quintessence machine beasts.”

Coran furrowed his eyebrows, mouthing _quintessence machine beasts_.

“You mean the robeasts?” Hunk asked.

Lotor blinked. “Quite possibly. Part machine, part beast, indestructible and almost impossible to defeat?”

“That sounds about right,” Shiro said.

 “Then it’s entirely possible that she was correct. But how?”

Allura bit her lip. “She used a lot of quintessence to send us here. I could feel it. So maybe that’s when he was exposed?”

Lotor slowly nodded his head. “That may be, but then all of us would have been exposed.”

“Coran, didn’t you teleport earlier? And Pidge could control technology!” Keith said, “Could those be the results of overexposure?”

Lotor’s eyes lit up. “Yes, they very well could be. Has anyone else experienced any abnormalities?”

Lance shook his head, followed by Keith, Hunk, and Allura.

Shiro hesitated. “Maybe? I can’t tell yet.”

Lotor narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“It feels like I have another sense, but I don’t know if that counts as an ability. As far as I know, I can’t manipulate whatever it is.”

Coran offered, “Maybe we just haven’t been in a situation where their abilities would make themselves known. And new senses could be an indicator of hidden abilities.”

“Maybe.”

“As enlightening as this is, can you maybe explain what the heck that was?” Dr. Holt asked.

“Okay, so, quintessence is this stuff that kind of permeates everything and you can sort of think of it like The Force?” Hunk said, “Sort of. It can be used for different things and I usually call it magic because that’s what it seems to be. I mean, there’s no scientific answer.”

Dr. Holt gaped. Allura continued, “Hunk is mostly correct. I can use quintessence to connect to my castle, the lions, other living creatures. I can imbue certain abilities into inanimate objects, which is where the theory that it can be imbued into living things came from. I can warp space-time to fit my needs, to an extent. And…. I believe that if the situation were dire enough, I could bring the dead back to life. The paladins connect through quintessence with their Lions, as well.”

Younger Lance cut in. “So, she’s like a Jedi? That’s so cool! Are you guys training to become Jedi?”

Lance snorted. “Nah. Allura’s an alchemist, and we just happened to line up favorably with the lions.”

“That’s true.” Coran said. His head was still on the table, though he seemed to be in less pain. Was he in pain?

“And besides,” Hunk added, “Quintessence is fluid. When we started off, it was Shiro in Black, Keith in Red, and Lance in Blue. Then it was Keith in Black, Lance in Red, and Allura in Blue, and now Shiro’s back in Black. Oh my god we have to download that song.”

“It’s also one of the few substances that exists in every dimension, hence the bringing the dead back to life bit,” Lance said, “The Astral Plane is where the Lions consciousness’s exist, which is a whole place on its own made entirely of quintessence.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “We switched lions because Shiro was missing, and we think that it was mostly necessity – you have to have Voltron to save the universe, and so we forced ourselves to change in order to save it. There may also have been an emotional aspect to it, because we thought Shiro was dead, so –”

Shiro cut Keith off with a snort. “I _was_ dead.”

Keith froze, and slowly turned to Shiro, who had a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know where that came from.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It… it feels like the truth, but I’m obviously not dead, so….”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!”

“Well,” Shiro said, “It almost feels like my amnesia. I know something, but I can’t remember why?”

“That…” The argument seemed to deflate from Keith. “Our lives are so fucked up by now that I’m not even going to try to figure it out this time.”

“Let’s focus on these supposed abilities. Matt, Lotor, and Coran have abilities correct? That’s going to be useful.”

The three nodded. “So, that will be useful. We will need to see the extent of the abilities and if anyone has developed any. For now, we’ll work with the assumption that only you three have them.”

Lance nodded. It was fair, though the idea of having powers was interesting. What kind of power could he have?

Keith would probably have fire powers.

Lotor blew the lights (power?) out for a moment, Matt could read Altean, and Coran could teleport. All were totally different.

Could he do anything like that?

“Hey idiot,” Keith said, “Wake up.”

Lance turned to look at him.

“You tuned out,” Keith said, “You’ve got two hours. Then you’re headed to Cuba.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I turned an excerpt from a future chapter in to my creative writing professor and he suggested I publish it and I'm laughing my ass off.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance goes on a trip and makes from friends.

Lance pulled up to the meeting spot in Red, cloaked using a replica of Pidge’s cloaking device hastily put together by Matt and Hunk. He immediately locked onto the extra figures in the area. Had his family brought friends?

No. As Lance stepped out of the lion, it was made obvious that he wasn’t dealing with unauthorized friends.

It was the Galra. Apparently, even two hours was too long. And if the Galra had Lance’s family, then they might have had other people. Like the president, or the Queen of England.

Lance stepped out of Red, keeping her cloaked. “A welcome party! You shouldn’t have!”

The general smirked. “The Blue Paladin. I should have known.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, then remembered that he still wore the blue armor. Even so, “What does that mean?”

He saw his family gape at the sound of his voice.

“Nothing, nothing.” The general said, half lightheartedly, “How ‘bout you hand over your bayard?”

Lance’s bayard formed his blaster. “How ‘bout no?”

The general narrowed his eyes. “How ‘bout yes? Or else, sacrifice your family.”

Lance mimicked the general, narrowing his own eyes. A hundred scenarios flew through his mind. Unfortunately, none of them involved everyone getting out alive.

Lance dropped his blaster.

The general nodded again and two Galra made their way over to him. After a quick pat-down that felt more like groping and the removal of his armor, Lance was herded over to his family, and handcuffed moments later.

As Lance inspected his cuffs (some sort of zip-tie like material, but thicker), the general picked up Lance’s bayard from where he’d dropped it. “The red bayard. Odd.”

Lance glared at him as the five of them were herded into his ship.

“Lance?” Luis asked, “What’s going on?”

One of the guards nudged Luis harshly. “Quiet,” He said.

Lance cast a helpless look in their direction. Hopefully, it would keep them quiet, because Lance was far from helpless. Already, a plan was forming. It all depended on where they were being taken.

They were immediately thrown into the prison cells with only sentries to watch over them.

Lance raised an eyebrow. These guys were stupid. Or overconfident. Or both.

Thanking God for his long arms and flexibility, Lance wriggled his legs through his arms, so that his hands were in front of him. Looking around, he found that the Galra hadn’t bothered to remove Lisa’s, Rachel’s, or his mom’s purses from them. Stupid, definitely stupid, but incredibly helpful. He rifled through Lisa’s purse and gripped the pocket knife he knew she kept in it. Making sure the sentries weren’t looking, he cut through his cuffs.

His niece, Nadia, and nephew, Sylvio, nearly cried when he immediately cut the other nine free. Making his way to the door, he caught the attention of one of the sentries. When it got close enough, Lance reached through the bars and stole its blaster, immediately shooting it in the head.

Thus, alerting more sentries and two guards.

Nice. Oh well. Lance shot the door open took out three sentries and the guards, eyeing the three others that came cautiously through the door.

“Here,” He handed the blaster to Lisa, who was closest to him, then made a break for the other downed sentries. Unfortunately, the more guards stopped him.

Thanking God once again for close combat practice, Lance kept himself too close to the guard to him to shoot Lance, and wrestled the blaster out of his hands, doing the same to him and his companion as he’d done to the sentries.

Lance counted; he had seven blasters left.

Lance handed out the rest of the blasters to his family, the kids not getting one. That left one weapon left, but Nadia and Sylvio were four years old, so they would go without.

One of the other cells made a small noise, and odd sound that Lance couldn’t place, but one that reminded him that there was the possibility that he and his family may not have been the only ones being held prisoner.

A quick peek into the cell that made the noise revealed two other prisoners in that cell specifically, both alien.

Lance shot their door open as well, and checked the other cells, finding two more prisoners. He gathered them around.

“We’re getting off this ship, so, does anyone have experience with blasters?”

Two of the aliens raised their hands, and Lance took the gun from Marco, who he knew didn’t have experience with a gun, handing it to one of them.

“Okay, that’s good. We have guns, which means we have protection, but the Galra are going to know we’ve escaped, so we need to be ready to fight. There’s fifteen of us, and we have six guns. Do you think you could kill if push –” He stopped, realizing that the phrase wouldn’t be something the other four aliens understood. “If need be?”

Immediately all of Lance’s family tensed up, but all four of the aliens nodded their heads. Lance thought about it, then removed the guns from Luis, Abuela, and Mamá, who he knew would be the most squeamish, and handed them to the other alien who could shoot, as well as one of the other two.

Lance explained, “Shooting is pretty simple – if they get close enough to you, just point and shoot. Aim for the torso, that’s going to be the biggest target, and don’t shoot if they’re too far away. We’ll” Lance gestured to himself and the other two with gun experience, “hopefully take them out before they can get that close.”

They nodded, and Lance almost took off towards the doors, then paused. “I think I’m going to need your names.”

The two with experience introduced themselves as Kerrna and Madreo, the other two Nescas and Mansi.

Lance nodded, “Kerrna, Madreo, Nescas, Mansi, meet my sisters, Rachel and Lisa, my brothers, Luis and Marco, my niece and nephew, Nadia and Sylvio, my Mamá, Mari, my Papá, Alex, and my abuela, Zamira.”

There was a brief moment where the eight stared at each other, then Marco attempted a wave. Kerrna waved back, and the tension was broken.

“Alright, let’s go,” Lance whispered.

Making their way through the ship, there weren’t many obstacles. The others looked relieved at that, but it put Lance on edge. It meant that the Galra were congregating somewhere.

Probably where he was leading them.

A small scuffling noise caught Lance’s attention, halfway to the hangar. He held up a hand, stopping the others, and listened.

A quiet _thump_ came from the left of him. In the dark, almost-pink light, Lance had thought that it was a blank wall, but a closer look revealed what appeared to be a door. It was probably for something like maintenance, but Lance couldn’t think of any reason any of the Galra would be in the room.

“Stay here,” He whispered to the other, and made his way across the hallway. Running his hand along the outer seam, the door gave way, and Lance pried it open. Out of the open doorway tumbled a little girl, probably six or seven years old. Past her, Lance could see his armor and bayard, and all the luggage his family had brought, but he didn’t focus on that.

The little girl blinked at him, then registered everyone there, and stumbled back into the closet.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered. Lance tilted his head. What did she have to be sorry for? His question was sort of answered when she continued, “I won’t be in your way.”

Lance frowned, wondering why she’d be in people’s way, but cleared his face immediately when the girl flinched – unconsciously, minutely, so that Lance thought she was trying to repress it.

“You’re not in our way,” He tried for a reassuring smile, but it didn’t seem to work, “Who put you in here?”

“Daddy.”

The word drove a spike of ice into Lance’s heart, followed by a wave of fire. He tried not to let his sudden emotions play on his face.

“Does your Daddy do this a lot?”

The girl nodded minutely.

“Does he scare you?”

Another nod, this one accompanying a scrunched face.

Lance thought for a minute, then asked, “Do you want to come with us? You won’t ever have to see your Daddy again.”

The girl hesitated. Scooted into the hallway slightly. Slowly, she nodded her head. Lance grinned at her again. This time, she gave a small smile back.

“Alright, give me just a minute. I need to get to the armor behind you.”

It only took Lance a minute or so to put all his armor back on and grab his bayard. He handed his blaster to Luis, leaving only the kids, Mamá, and Marco without a gun.

He also handed them the easier to carry bags. It would be difficult to get a full-blown suitcase out, but small bags could make it.

He looked down at the girl. “Take my hand?” He asked, putting said hand palm up at chest height for her. She started to reach for it but paused and looked up at him.

Lance kept all infliction off his face except for a small smile, and she looked down as she slid her hand into his. He gripped her firmly – if he was right, he could end up needing to swing her up onto his waist. He informed her of this, and she looked up, mouth open, but stopped and nodded. Lance didn’t know what that meant, but he decided he needed to be prepared for her to freak out if he did anything.

For the moment though, they were safe, and he said, “Let’s go. We’re probably going to have to fight our way out of here, so be prepared.”

They walked in silence for a bit, but the girl began grow hesitant and slow, so Lance decided to distract her.

Not removing his attention from their path, but diverting some to talking to the girl, he asked, “So, what’s your name?”

“Arkida,” She muttered.

“Wow, that’s a pretty name. My name’s Lance.”

Arkida smiled a little and looked up at him. “Lance is pretty too.” She offered.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I’ve always thought my name was a little boring.”

Arkida’s jaw dropped. “No, it’s not. Lance is really pretty!” She insisted.

“Aww. Thank you.” Lance smiled down at her.

For a moment, it was quiet, but Arkida seemed to have calmed down, so Lance let it be. Then his helmet beeped, and Arkida flinched, tensing again. Lance stopped the procession for a minute, glancing back at the others. The two who could shoot were tense and prepared to shoot, and his family were relatively ready too, so Lance took all his attention away.

“Shh…” He calmed Arkida. “It’s just my helmet. My friend is calling me. I’m going to answer now, okay?”

She nodded. Lance spoke aloud, “Accept call.”

Keith’s face flickered onto the screen. “Keith? How are you calling me?”

Keith shrugged. “I left the red armor in my room after I left, so I just grabbed it, so I could talk to you. Where are you? You’ve been gone almost half a varga now. Hunk’s been back for fifteen minutes.”

“The Galra had my family hostage,” Lance explained quietly, “We’re heading out now, but it’ll take a while. It’s going to be difficult to get all fourteen of us out of here.”

 _Ah,_ Keith mouthed, then, “Well, I guess there isn’t much we can do, is there?”

Lance offered an apologetic smile. “No, not without making the situation worse.”

Keith almost ended the call, but Lance had an idea and stopped him. “Do you want to talk to someone?” He asked.

“Sure?” Keith responded, half questioning.

Lance grinned and leaned down to Arkida. “Do you want to talk to my friend Keith?”

Arkida gripped his hand. “Where is he?”

“Keith is on Earth, a planet near here. You’ll be talking to him through the communicator in my helmet.”

Slowly, Lance removed his helmet and placed it on Arkida’s head.

At least she wouldn’t have to watch if they had to kill someone. Lance wished he’d thought to do the same for the other kids.

Lance led Arkida by the hand as they walked to the hangar, the others trailing behind him.

Just like he suspected, the entire crew of the ship was waiting for them.

Before they were spotted, Lance ducked behind a wall. Turning to the others, he said, “Okay, we have ten people with guns, only three who know how to use the guns. They’ve got fifty trained soldiers, so we need a plan. And that plan is – rapid fire.”

Kerrna blinked at him. “How is that a plan?”

Lance shrugged. “Look, only you, me, and Madreo know how to use these things. We can actually aim, so that’s what we’ll do, but the other five need to just shoot and hope to incapacitate.”

Everyone was silent for a minute, and with a jolt, Lance realized that Arkida was quiet too. She was staring up at him from inside the helmet. Lance leaned down and said, “My mother is going to pick you up now, okay?”

Arkida nodded. Abuela picked Nadia up, and Luis grabbed Sylvio. Once they were in their respective adult’s arms, Lance nodded to the others, putting Lu, Mamá, and Abuela behind everyone else.

The ten of them rushed the small army, shooting the entire way.

Immediately, there was return fire, and Lance curled into himself to try and protect Arkida.

By the time they’d reached the line, ten or fifteen of the soldiers and sentries had been taken out. His blaster became his sword, and he drove it into the chest of the person nearest him. Arkida flinched at his scream. Lance internally winced.

Luckily, they didn’t have to fight any longer. With a screaming roar, Red attacked the ship, finally sensing enough danger to act on her own.

“Guys! This way!” Lance pointed at Red’s jaw, which was open for them to climb on.

Marco was on first, Lisa covering him.

The others followed; Lance backed up towards Red, eventually putting enough distance between himself and the army to warrant the blaster.

With a final few shots, Red closed her jaw. Lance stumbled into the pilot’s seat, turning around and firing off a laser that destroyed the ship.

Lance set coordinates for Earth, which wasn’t far, considering they were still in the asteroid belt.

A small sniffle cut through the haze Lance was stuck in. Arkida had taken off his helmet and she was staring at the floor, chin length appendages hiding her face. He quickly did a scan of the solar system, then stood and made his way over to her. “Arkida?” He asked.

“I’m sorry!” She cried. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Lance soothed her, “It’s okay, you don’t need to be sorry. You did just fine.”

She looked up at him, and Lance reached out to pat her shoulder, but she shied away, unconsciously. He retracted the hand and sat down, allowing Arkida to decide her next course of action.

“Is anyone injured?” Lance asked. Luis nodded, holding his shoulder, and Nescas had been grazed by a shot. He nodded. “Alright. We can heal those up in couple of hours, so just hold tight.”

He let his head fall back against the wall and grinned ever so slightly when Arkida sat down next to him – not touching him, but close.

“What just happened?”

It was Lisa, with Sylvio sat on her lap. Lance internally groaned – he loved his family, but Lisa knew how to get every last drop of information out of him. At least he was planning to tell them anyway.

“We just got captured by aliens, then escaped after like fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, I noticed,” She muttered.

Lance sighed. “I hate this part. Just… ask your questions and I’ll answer them. You know I’m not good at contextualizing.”

Mamá cut Lisa off from the beginning of her question, which Lance was thankful for, because Lisa had a tendency to jump off the deep end and leave them all confused.

“Why did we get that vague and vaguely ominous call from Iverson?”

Lance scoffed. “The irony. We were actually trying to get you to safety before the Galra found you and used you as leverage against me. As you can see, we failed.”

Mamá nodded, “Right.”

She didn’t say anything else. It was Marco who asked the next question.

“Who’re the Galra?”

The aliens looked at Marco like he was crazy.

“The Galra are a race of humanoid beings that tend to be purple in color, have yellow sclera, and usually some form of identifiable marking on their head. The Galra Empire has spread out over the entirety of the known universe, so most traits are variant to the extreme. They’re generalized as evil brutes who’ll do anything for the sake of expansion, and this is often true, but there are small rebel groups who fight back. Their numbers are so small it makes almost no difference, unfortunately, and they work from the shadows, thanks to the prejudice against their species.”

Everyone on the ship stared at him. Lisa ventured with, “Was that scripted?”

Lance shot her a finger gun. “You know it was.”

“Okay,” She said, “How ‘bout… where’d you get this ship?”

Lance nodded sagely. “A wonderful question. This,” he patted the floor, “is my friend Red. She a giant sentient lion that can communicate mentally with me and my- Keith.”

“Your Keith?” Luis raised an eyebrow. Nadia leaned against him, sleeping, but with tear tracks running down her cheeks. Sylvio was the same. Lance didn’t blame them, being only four years old. Arkida was fine, but she was also probably used to what had happened, or at least, the concept.

“Yes, my Keith. Red is one of five lions, and we found Blue here on Earth – Blue’s the other lion I can talk to mentally – and Blue took us to the place where we got Red back from the Galra.”

Red gave a soft purr, as if backing him up. Lance gave her another soft pat and whispered, “Thanks, Red.”

The questioning continued until they got back to Earth a couple of minutes later, where Lance stood up and landed Red gently.

To his surprise, Arkida grabbed his hand as they were heading out. Lance guessed she must have wanted to stay with him.

“Whoa,” Someone said, “Where are we?”

Lance tried to shove down a proud smile. “Welcome to the Castle of Lions!”

He led them to med bay and set up two pods for Luis and Nescas, checking on Pidge once they were in. Her face had mostly healed, so he decided to wait for her to come out of the pod before they left.

Lance sized up Madreo, Mansi, and Kerrna. They were humanoid and roughly human-sized, so he could probably find something for them to wear besides prison garments.

And then food. It was afternoon, so his family wouldn’t be hungry, though he’d feed them anyways, but the Galra had a nasty habit of starving prisoners, so the other three were at least malnourished. A glance down at Arkida showed that she was little more than skin and bone as well.

Lance nodded decisively to himself.

“C’mon, let get your guys some clothes and food. I bet it’s been a while since you had a bath?”

Mansi nodded, making a face that Lance interpreted as her version of smiling.

He led the four of them to the showers, leaving them to get clean while he grabbed clothes for them. It was pretty easy for the adults, but to get anything for Arkida, Lance had to apprehend Keith to help him look. In the end, they found a storage closet full of dresses that had probably once belonged to Allura.

He didn’t think she’d mind.

Keith brought Lance’s family into the dining room once everyone was dressed, and when Lance led the four aliens in, they were all playing with their food goo with vague disgust.

Lance snickered.

“What?” Marco asked defensively, “It’s nasty.”

Lance nodded at him. “That it is, but fortunately, we have better tasting goo, Keith just doesn’t know it exists.”

Keith’s jaw dropped. “We have decent goo and you didn’t tell me?”

“We had Earth food, dude, I didn’t think it was relevant.”

Keith narrowed his eyes, but sat down, and Lance went about making up plates of the good goo.

The new goo was turquoise in color and similar enough, in texture as well, to the original stuff that Lance usually felt the dread of eating goo again, before he actually ate it and remembered that it tasted fine. It wasn’t that he hated the original goo, because he’d gotten used to it and it wasn’t disgusting anymore, but he had been eating the same thing pretty much day in and day out for a year.

Halfway through their impromptu lunch, Pidge walked in, made herself a plate, plopped down, and groaned.

“Hey,” Keith said. Pidge glared.

“Do not talk to me. I am in a bad mood.”

The others were looking at Pidge curiously, so Lance said, “Guys, this is Pidge. She just got out of the healing pod, so that’s why she’s in a bad mood, but she’s nice enough.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “You describing me as nice and not, and I quote, “An evil little gremlin”?”

Lance grinned at her. “No, you’re that too. I just don’t want to scare anyone.”

“Scare who?” Pidge blinked. Lance nodded at Arkida, who was warily watching the interaction.

Arkida looked up and flinched when she saw Pidge looking directly at her.

The two stared at each other for a minute, but then Pidge smiled at Arkida. Arkida hesitantly smiled back.

Lance leaned down and said quietly to Arkida, “She’s gonna fall in love with you.”

Arkida frowned, “What do you mean?”

Lance grinned. “Pidge has a soft spot for cute things, she just doesn’t like to admit it. And you are cute.”

Across the table, Pidge narrowed her eyes at Lance.

Arkida leaned closer to Lance and asked, “What happened to her face?”

Lance tilted his head. “The scars? She got hurt and it can’t get all the way better, so they’ll never go away.”

Pidge reached up to touch the mark cutting across her cheek. “Oh fun, it’s numb.”

Keith reached out and flicked the tip of Pidge’s nose. “Do you feel that?”

Pidge thought for a minute, then shook her head. “No. I hope it’s not permanent.”

“Yeah me too,” Lance muttered.

\---------It didn’t take long for everyone to finish eating – the ex-prisoners couldn’t stomach much, and Lance’s family had eaten lunch only a couple hours earlier.

Lance and Keith led them out of the castle and to the Garrison – through a crowd of kids, whose classes had ended. They were watching the castle, and some whispered to each other. Lance imagined they were talking about aliens, since there was really no other explanation for it.

The mob spread to let the group through, Keith and Lance in the front, Pidge in the back, surrounding the others. Arkida held onto Lance again, flinching when the mostly quiet students appeared to recognize him and Keith and burst into a flurry of whispers.

Lance rolled his eyes.

The group made its way into the building with relatively little disturbance though. The students originally tried to talk to him and Keith, but the two of them and Pidge glared, and they backed off.

It didn’t take long for them to get back to the meeting room, and Allura immediately locked onto their unanticipated guests.

“Keith told me what happened. Are all of you okay?”

Lance nodded, not letting go of Arkida. “Yeah, we’re fine. Luís and Nescas are in pods at the moment.”

Allura nodded. Turning to Iverson, she said, “You need to have fighters ready to go. The Galra know we’re here, and they’ll do anything to get this planet under subjugation. Contact other governments if you can. You’ll need to be as united as possible, or you won’t win this war.”

Iverson nodded, turning to his laptop.

Allura turned to face the reporters who had, up to that point, merely been observing. Lance hadn’t even seen them trying to document anything and he assumed they were scared of Iverson.

Who wasn’t?

Lance tuned out his family reuniting with Veronica, who he assumed showed up while he was out.

Allura was telling them to get the message out as quickly as possible, and they nodded, eyes wide.

Lance hoped that between the two of them, they knew English, Mandarin, and Spanish, considering that those three languages were spoken by most people in the world.

Although, they may not need that, considering Matt’s newfound abilities.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team brainstorms for the coming war and figures some things out.

“We need to protect the Earth,” Lotor said, “But we also need to consider our past selves who aren’t here. My younger self and his generals, as well as younger Allura and Coran are in danger of being attacked by the empire. And with the witch, they can find us now.”

Allura gasped, “They know where this timeline’s Black Lion is. We must retrieve it.”

Rachel tilted her head. Lance gave her a wink. She giggled.

“Haggar may know where Yellow is too. We weren’t exactly quiet about getting it last time.” Hunk pointed out.

“We should split up,” Keith said, “Haggar may know our capabilities, but her underlings don’t. A team should go to Arus, another to wherever Lotor’s group is at the moment, and a third to the location of the Yellow lion.”

Lance nodded. “The Red Lion will be safe for now, Blue is here, and Green is hidden safely as well. Once we know that those in the most danger of all are safe, we can go after the others.”

“Exactly.”

“And then,” Hunk said, “We’ll go back to universe defending stuff. The Balmera, the merpeople planet. Also, the blade of Marmora should be contacted, I think.”

“I should be able to help with that. They may be difficult though,” Krolia said.

“Once we finally get back to where we were,” Allura said, “We’ll work on a new plan for taking down Haggar and Zarkon. We’ll probably need one that’s different from what we had last time, since Haggar already knows that plan and because it didn’t work last time.”

Lance sighed. “This is going to take so much longer now, though. Haggar knows all our plans. She’ll have countermeasures.”

Shiro nodded. “Lance is right. I have no doubt that all of our knowledge is void now.”

“Okay,” Hunk said, “So we need to work on a new plan for freeing everyone like we did at Naxcela. If we start in this general area,” He gestured to the earth, we could push them back, one by one, then circle back out and get a big chunk. It’s not exactly what we did last time, so Haggar won’t be expecting it.”

Allura nodded. “That’s a good plan. If we repeatedly do that though, they’ll figure us out. We’ll need to be subtle about it, and maybe do it in incredibly large chunks.”

Pidge’s eyes glinted. “We could even do several at the same time. If we do it on opposite sides of Galra territory, their defenses will be split.”

“We should also plan for other variables. It doesn’t do any good to take down Zarkon only to have Lotor take his place again.”

Lotor nodded, “A good point. As I said, we will have to decide what to with my younger self and his generals.”

“You guys are planning the destruction of an empire and you should still be in school.”

Lance looked up. In their planning, he’d forgotten the others in the room.

Hunk’s father frowned. “You dropped out of the Garrison for this shit?”

Hunk stared at his father, unimpressed. “What?”

The man glowered. “I _said_ , you dropped out of the Garrison to pilot some robotic animal?”

Younger Hunk in the background shrunk a little. Lance’s Hunk squared his shoulders and mimicked, “You dropped out of fatherhood for some bad mood?”

The man was visibly angered. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

Crack.

Hunk didn’t move – didn’t flinch. He ignored the growing red mark on his cheek. “I meant it.”

“How dare you,” The man seethed. “I raised you. Read you bedtime stories, fed you, entertained you. _Loved_ you, for this?”

Hunk narrowed his eyes. “You hit me. Threw me across the room if I caught you in a bad mood. Put me down. You were a teacher, and you got caught assaulting a student. You’re disgusting and deserve to die.”

Hunk’s eyes blazed in a way Lance saw only rarely.

“And that’s not counting what you did to Mom or the lasting psychological problems I have as a result of _you._ ”

The man stalked forward and grabbed Hunk’s arm, who immediately twisted out of the way, but in a weird way. “You cannot hurt me anymore.”

Hunk’s father backed off, and immediately turned to his younger son. “But I can hurt him.”

“Don’t,” Hunk warned, but his father didn’t heed it. Before he was within arm’s reach of Younger Hunk, a particle barrier encircled him.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Pidge and I finished those personal sized particle barriers.”

Hunk’s dad pressed on the barrier, growling when it didn’t budge. He took a small step forward, and the barrier went with him, but the moment he got within a few inches of another mass (in this case, Younger Hunk), it stopped. He turned to Older Hunk. “Let me out. Now.”

Hunk made a very exaggerated thinking motion. “Hmmm…. No!”

Hunk’s mother rushed over and grabbed her younger son, pulling away from her husband.

The man growled, but Hunk ignored him. Lance wondered what would happen to him now.

“What?” Pidge asked.

Hunk flinched. “Uhhh…. Surprise?”

“You were abused?” Keith demanded, eyes dark and face set.

“Not physically, really. Only occasionally.” Hunk skittered away from Keith. “It was more yelling and putting me down.”

“That’s not okay, Hunk.” Shiro stepped in, looking at both Hunks, “It’s never okay, no matter how “little” it was. Verbal abuse equates to mental and emotional abuse. It affects you until far into adulthood.”

“I’m fine, Shiro,” Lance’s Hunk said. “I’m fine. Sometimes my anxiety kicks in and I freak out over nothing, but I know how to cope and I’m completely fine.”

Shiro looked like he was going to argue further, but Lance cut in, “I believe you, buddy. It’s just that we suddenly know something we never knew before and its not a good thing and it scares us,” Lance made a point to stare at Younger Hunk too, who nodded slowly once he caught onto what Lance wanted, “And we want to protect you and make sure you’re as fine as can possibly be. You didn’t deserve it whatever your mind or anxiety says, and we’ll never go off on you for any reason, and we’ll never give up on you. Okay?”

Lance’s Hunk burst into tears and swept Lance into a huge hug. Younger Hunk sobbed quietly, clinging to his mother. Younger Lance made his way to Hunk and his mother, wrapping his arms around Hunk.

Keith walked up to them and wrapped his arms around Lance and Hunk. The rest followed.

“I love you guys,” Hunk said.

“We love you too, Hunk,” Lance said.

When their hug broke, Lance made a point to drag his younger self over to the younger Hunk and give him a big hug too. “I know you aren’t the closest of friends yet, but Hunk is the best friend I’ve ever had,” Lance said, glancing at his own friend. He gave the younger two a big smile and headed back to his team.

Iverson checked his phone. “It’s curfew.” He turned to the families, “We have rooms set up for you. If you’d follow Professor Ruinj…”

Hunk’s mother seemed to gather some courage, and before she left, she called, “Hunk!”

Hunk looked up at the same time his younger self did, just in time for her to collide with him. He startled, automatically hugging her back.

“Um. Mom?”

The rest of his family joined them when they saw the confused look on Hunk’s face.

“Just because you’re from the future doesn’t mean you aren’t family.”

Hunk teared up, and started crying when his younger self joined the hug. “I love you guys.”

When the hug broke, younger Hunk huddled close. “Thank you for getting rid of him,” he tilted his heat toward his father, “even if it hurts.”

“It’s fine. You know what he did right?”

Younger Hunk nodded. “Yeah. But it doesn’t change the fact that he made me love him.”

Hunk nodded, “As long as you know. Go to bed. He’ll be gone by morning.”

Once everyone was gone, Shiro turned to Iverson. “We’re going to go to the castle. I guess… Just make sure these guys” He motioned towards the would-be assassin and Hunk’s father, “Don’t get out? That would be bad.”

Iverson rolled his eyes. “Just go to bed.”

Shiro smiled, “He’s right. Almost everyone here has been injured at some point today. We need the rest.”

Keith yawned. “I think my room is all dusty. It has been several months since I last slept in it.”

“I’ll help you clean it,” Lance offered. Keith smiled at him.

In hindsight, perhaps they shouldn’t have been in the same room as a bed after such a long and strenuous day. Lance didn’t think they’d have made it through if it weren’t for the lengthy break they got. When Lance woke up, Keith was, once again, on top of him. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable – their time training had left Lance strong enough to support Keith’s weight – but it wasn’t the best feeling. Lance slowly extracted himself, giving Keith a kiss on the head when he grumbled.

He made his way to the kitchen, resolving to help Hunk with whatever they had for food.

“Make a note, Hunk. We’re on Earth, we’re going to get Earth food today!” He announced. Hunk nodded along. “Definitely. Here, stir this.”

When Shiro walked in that morning, he looked like shit.

“Dude, are you okay?” Hunk asked.

Shiro blinked blearily, as if he wasn’t sure he had heard the question. “Yeah.”

Lance raised an unbelieving eyebrow. “You sure?”

Shiro dropped his head on the table. “I’ve been having nightmares and my memories are all scrambled and it’s really confusing.”

Lance exchanged a look with Hunk. “What do you mean?”

“It’s like I’ve got two sets of memories in my head,” Shiro didn’t lift his head, “One where I’m dead, one where I’m alive.”

Lance’s jaw dropped.

“Uhh…” Hunk muttered, “Buddy, I think this is something you need to talk to everyone about.”

“Yeah I know.”

Shiro did tell everyone. It took a few hours, but Lance and Hunk successfully rounded everyone up, and Shiro explained everything.

“Well,” Pidge said, “You were with us this whole time, so obviously, the set where you were alive is the real one.”

“But –  the set where I was dead is telling me that the me that was with you was a clone being used by Haggar to spy on you. Only… he? I? didn’t know it.” Shiro put his head in his hands. “I don’t know. It’s so complicated.”

“Let’s talk it out and maybe you’ll understand better,” Keith said, “What’s the alive version say?”

“Well, in hindsight, I was in a lot of pain. Headaches, mostly, sometimes full on migraines. I wasn’t acting like myself – I said and did some things that I felt like I had no control over.”

He shot a look at Lance, and Lance’s hatred towards (not Shiro himself, but) his actions melted. “And there was the unending feeling of being watched, but I put that down to paranoia and PTSD. All of those could agree with the clone thing.”

“They could.” Lotor stood up, pacing. “However, if the clone thing is true, then my theory about which experiment you were subjected to was incorrect.”

“What was your theory?”

“Haggar had a plan. An experiment. I hadn’t thought she had implemented it, but the expected result looked like what you were going through. She called it _Project Kurōn._ ”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Well that solves that. _Project Kurōn_ is what happened to Shiro. Only with the added twist of cloning.”

“I _just said –”_ Lotor snapped, but Shiro cut him off.

“I know. But Kurōn in my native language translates to “clone”.”

`````

“How the _fuck_ does she know Japanese?”

Shiro gave Keith a blank look. “She dissected my brain. She knows everything about me. It’s why she’s so dangerous.”

“Okay,” Pidge said, “We already knew that. We need to consider the implications. You said that as far as you can tell, the memories merge at the same time we got sent back in time. It was probably the overload of quintessence forcing you back into your body. But!” She jumped. “Is the clone still alive? Are you the same person now, like Shiro on steroids, or two different people inhabiting the same body?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro slumped, “The memories of me being alive feel more real, but the fact that I can remember being dead at all… wouldn’t that mean clone me and original me combined?”

“Not necessarily,” Keith said, “If you share a body, you also share a brain. What’s probably happening is that you remember being alive better because that was _you,_ and the memories of being dead are in your brain, but it was the other you. So, you remember both because you share a brain.”

“Oh. How likely is that?”

“It makes sense from what I know about biology,” Pidge said, “But also – people with multiple personalities don’t always know what the others are doing. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the person and if we’re thinking that this is something like that, then that opens up another can of worms.”

Coran smiled assuring. “What Keith said is very likely, Shiro, and if he’s right, it could be something like multiple personalities. However, the other possibility – of you two merging – is equally likely. We won’t know until something happens to make us realize.”

“Like what?” Allura asked.

“If there’s two Shiro’s in there, then there’s the possibility that they can trade control of the body. If that happens, then we’d probably notice.”

“I have a headache.” Shiro announced. “I just…. Talking about this feels weird. I don’t like it.  Maybe Haggar has some sort of influence over my mind or something. Actually, I’m certain she does. But for now, let’s not. Please.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t we go on a walk? I had a question for you anyway.”

Shiro nodded.

Once they were far enough away, Shiro turned to Lance, “What was your question?”

“I…” Lance played with his fingernails. “Well, you had been acting weird, but now we know why, I guess. I just… are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Lance.” Shiro seemed to study him. “Are _you_ okay?”

Lance looked up. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Shiro put a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Are you sure? Back before I died, you had a lot of insecurities. When I came back, you seemed to have gotten over them, but I was kind of an asshole. I didn’t hurt you or anything?”

Lance hid a smile. “I really am fine. I had gotten used to being Keith’s right-hand, and being so important to him – being needed – helped me with a lot of that.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “Needed?”

Lance went pink. “He kind of sucked at leadering at first. I helped him get the hang of it. By the time you came back, we’d sorted everything out… It was different with you leading. I had to adjust. But I’m fine, really.”

Shiro frowned. “Okay.”

They walked a little further, Lance trying to lead them outside. Before they got there, though, they came across a scene. An old teacher of Lance’s, staring at the younger Shiro as if he were a ghost.

Younger Shiro stared at the man, hiding his hands behind his back.

Lance hadn’t known him well, but the way his Shiro looked at the teacher was not one Lance could have ever imagined on his leader’s face.

He looked devastated. Angry. But also… resigned.

“Shiro.” The man said, licking his lips, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Takashi.”

Younger Shiro didn’t say anything; didn’t move.

“I shouldn’t have made you choose.”

Younger Shiro sniffed, then broke. “I missed you.”

The man threw his arms around him. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Younger Shiro hugged him back. The man sniffled again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Shiro looked away from his younger self.

“You okay?” Lance asked.   

Shiro stared at him with sad eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

“Who was that?”

“Adam.” Shiro’s face twisted, “My ex.”

“Ex? But younger you...”

“Yeah.” He looked down. “I would have forgiven Adam in his position. But not anymore. He broke my heart.”

“What happened?”

“I got diagnosed a few years ago. Terminal. I wasn’t going to live past thirty.”

Lance gasped. That news had never reached the public, especially with Shiro headed to Kerberos.

“I sort of gave up on everything. Space, myself. But Adam stayed and he helped me get through it. And I guess that’s what inspired me to propose. He’d made it clear he was going to stay with me no matter what. He accepted, and I was so excited.” Shiro smiled, bittersweet.

“It was his support that gave me the courage to apply for the Kerberos mission. And I got chosen for the Kerberos mission. I’d already given up on going to space, so I was so excited. And then... he didn’t want me to go. We got into a fight. He told me he wouldn’t be waiting for me. Broke up with me. Four weeks later, I left Earth.”

Lance squeezed Shiro’s arm.

“I’m okay. I’m over him... but I don’t think I can forgive him. It still hurts – I had trusted him, and he abandoned me. Everything I went through... it would have been so much easier if I could have convinced myself that I still had Adam. And it’s not his fault all that shit happened, but. I just... I can’t.”

“Fair enough.”

Shiro side-eyed Lance. “I hope so.”

Younger Shiro broke off the hug.

“You may have been right anyway.”

“I... what?”

Younger Shiro gestured to his older self and Lance. “They saved us. From aliens. Apparently, they’ve been fighting a war against the aliens this whole time.”

Adam’s jaw dropped. He trailed over Shiro’s white forelock and scar (he didn’t go any further downward, and Lance noticed that Shiro’s mechanical hand was behind him in his pocket, long sleeves hiding the rest).

Adam looked between the two Shiros.

“I... what?”

Lance’s Shiro waved. “Hi.”

Lance noticed that there wasn’t any affliction to Shiro’s voice; it was his “I’m the leader and must stay impartial” voice.

“Um. Hi?” Adam squeaked. “What going on?”

Shiro smiled wryly. “We were sent back in time, just in time to save them,” He gestured to his younger self and the other members of the Kerberos mission.

“What happened?”

Shiro shrugged. “The Galra Empire is a horrible place. What do you think they did upon discovering a new species?”

“I don’t know?” Adam looked like he was going to pass out.

Shiro huffed. “What do _we_ do when we find new species.”

“Dissect them. Experiment with them. Figure out how they work.”

With every word, Adam grew paler. “How did you survive?”

Shiro chuckled. “I didn’t. Just happen to be fortunate enough to know people who can bring the dead back to life.”

Adam squeaked, turning to Younger Shiro. “Are _you_ okay? I can’t believe….”

Older Shiro turned to Lance with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, _you see?_

As they walked away, Lance asked, “What do you think of that?”

Shiro shrugged. “I don’t really think they’re making the right decision by getting back together immediately. It will only cause problems later.”

“Are you going to do anything about them?”

Shiro laughed. “Nah. That’s their decision. I don’t have any input.”

Lance smiled. “Maybe you could do the overprotective relative thing,” he suggested, “”Break his heart and I’ll break your face.””

Shiro laughed again, and left to go to his room. Lance continued to his old room.

His mother was there talking to his younger self.

“Lance,” She greeted.

“Hey,” Lance said.

His younger self looked uncomfortable.

“I was thinking Arkida could use some friends. Why don’t you bring her over to meet Nadia and Sylvio tomorrow?”

Lance nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”

His mother smiled and patted younger Lance on the knee. “You’re probably here to talk to him, so I’ll leave.”

Lance watched her leave and turned back to his younger self. “So…”

“So…”

Lance sighed. “Look, I know this is weird. I figured I should make sure you’re not about to have a panic attack.”

His younger self huffed. “Of course it’s weird. Suddenly there’s another me and me and my whole family are targets in an intergalactic war.”

Lance bit his lip. “I know. Imagine how I felt when I was blasted into space and was told I was one of the only few people who could save the universe. But look – you and Veronica and Luis all know how to shoot. Marco has practice with knives and blades and stuff. Teach each other to use them and you can defend yourselves.”

His younger self wrapped his arms around his legs. “Yeah, but what if it isn’t enough?”

Lance wrapped a hand around his younger self. “Pidge and Hunk and Matt are going to help the Garrison update their tech and defenses. As long as you stay within the Garrison, you should be fine.”

“That sounds terrible.”

Lance chuckled. “I know. It’s your decision. It’s the family’s decision. But it’s what I suggest.”

Younger Lance smiled.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot begins.

An alarm went off on Lance’s armor. He put his niece down and pulled up the report. Arkida read over his shoulder.

“What language is that?” She asked.

“Altean,” Lance responded absently, “I picked it up over the last year.”

“Can I learn?” Nadia asked.

“Me too!” Arkida said.

Sylvio looked up, “Me three! I wanna learn the alien language.”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll ask Allura. I’ve got to go.”

“I wanna help,” Arkida said. Lance stopped, helmet halfway on his head. Several quick thoughts flew through his mind, and as he slowly finished putting his helmet on, said, “We don’t really have a way you can help.”

Arkida frowned, and a low rumble made its way through the school.

Lance immediately recognized it as Blue’s. Specifically, this timeline’s Blue.

Fuck.

Arkida’s eyes went up, and she smiled up at Lance.

He groaned. “Okay, tell you what. You sit out of this fight, and we’ll teach you to fly Blue,” He whispered, keeping Nadia and Sylvio ignorant.

Arkida smiled. Lance nodded at her and made his way to Red.

The fight wasn’t too hard – it appeared that Zarkon was getting a feel for their abilities, so Lance didn’t need to concentrate too hard, allowing him to contemplate what he was going to do with Arkida.

He said he’d teach her to _fly_ Blue, not fight in her, so he could work with that, but he’d have to talk to everyone else about it.

When the fight ended (they didn’t even form Voltron), Lance caught the others still in the hangar.

“So…” He said, grabbing their attention, “We may have a problem.”

He gave the rundown of the situation, watching as the others’ faces flew through a flurry of expressions.

“Well… that certainly is interesting,” Allura began, “I can’t honestly think of any reason why the Blue Lion would choose such a young paladin, though I suppose…” She trailed off, apparently lost in thought.

Shiro stepped forward. “It doesn’t look like we can just create a plan so let’s lay out some questions to be answered. First, how much training should she get?”

Pidge appeared to record the question, then said, “Follow-up questions: how long should she train, how in-depth should it be, how old should she be before we allow her to participate in the actual fight?”

“All good questions,” Shiro acknowledged, “And I think that’s all we need right now?”

Hunk furrowed his eyebrows. “Should we try to piece together a second Voltron?”

The idea hit Lance in the face. It was possible. Blue had already chosen a paladin, who’s to say that the other Lions wouldn’t?

Allura shook herself out of whatever thoughts she was lost in, saying, “It’s entirely possible that Voltron will come together in this timeline even without our help. We should try to be there for whoever the Lions choose, so that at least they won’t be as lost and rushed as we were.”

“At least a few years, then,” Lance said, “For how long she should be trained. And any other paladins that end up being chosen. Because of what Allura said.”

Shiro nodded. “Okay. How much training should she get – and for that matter, other paladins?”

There was a moment of silence.

“I mean, we want to give them as much training as we can, but we can’t get through everything in only a few years, so basics of everything, or everything of the basics?” Hunk asked.

Pidge responded, “It’ll have to be the second one. Some of the more complicated stuff can’t be taught until they’ve mastered what comes before. We can help them prepare what comes after, but we can’t make it happen.”

Allura nodded. “That’s true. We can rush their training, but we can’t do it out of order. You guys saw how well that went – Shiro was the only one able to properly comprehend what we wanted and was the only one able to do it!”

Lance tilted his head. What was she talking about? Shiro did it, but no one else… “Are you talking about the “seeing through your lions’ eyes” thing?”

Allura nodded, “We’ll have to begin getting a look out for new paladins. It might not be a bad idea to go ahead and retrieve the Black Lion and the castle.”

“We were planning on doing something about your and Lotor’s younger selves. Why not now?” Keith agreed.

“We’ll think this over inside,” Shiro said, “For now, lets go get some showers and food.”

When Lance arrive to the room they’d been meeting in, he found Doctor Holt already there, along with everyone except Hunk.

Pidge shrugged. “It’s probably a good idea to have someone who knows what we’re doing anyway,” she said.

Hunk showed up a minute later, yawning. “Sorry. I’m really tired. I’ll be fine.”

“The next few movements are going to be critical. Haggar has the upper hand now,” Allura said.

Doctor Holt leaned over towards Pidge. “Movement?”

“Five days. A quintant is a day, a varga is an hour, a dobosh is a minute, and a tick is a second. Roughly.” She explained, “They’re the universal measurements of time, so we learned to use them.”

“We’ll be leaving Earth to gather our forces and prepare them for what’s to come,” Shiro said.

“Hunk and I are going to stay on Earth for a while to help them develop the necessary technology to defend themselves,” Pidge said, “Once we think they’re okay, we’ll come out to see the rest of you guys.”

Hunk hummed in agreement. “Yeah. It shouldn’t take too long, with people like Doctor Holt and Matt – the younger one, that is – on the team.”

“Lotor,” Shiro said, “Where is your younger self? How will you get him?”

“I will lead a group into the Quantum Abyss to find my younger self,” Lotor said.

Keith raised an eyebrow, exchanging a look with his mother. Lance pretended not to see it.

“I’ll go,” Keith volunteered at another look from his mother.

“Anyone else?” Lotor asked, “If we want to get my younger self without hurting him it’ll take some more power.”

“I can go,” Lance said, “You guys are close combatants, you should have some long-range backup.”

Lotor nodded, and Allura said, “I will go to Arus to hopefully get the castle powered up without waking up this time’s version of me and Coran. Then we could release the Black Lion. After that, we’ll go rescue the yellow lion. Perhaps we can come back for Hunk before doing so. Who would like to go with me?”

“I will,” Coran said, “I can orbit Arus and keep the castle while you’re on planet.”

Allura nodded. “I think I should go in alone, so that the castle doesn’t react badly, but I would like some backup.” She turned to Shiro, Matt, and Krolia, “Do any of you want to come? You would probably just be waiting outside the castle the whole time.”

Matt shook his head. “I’m going to try to contact my old friends. Warn them of what’s coming, y’know.”

“I’ll do the same with the Blade of Marmora,” Krolia said.

“I’ll go,” Shiro offered.

 

Lance pulled himself into the ship. Lotor hadn’t yet arrived, but Keith had, and his mother had followed him.

Krolia said something to Keith that made his eyebrows furrow. He nodded seriously and accepted something. Krolia ruffled his hair and walked away. Keith scowled at her back.

“What’s up?” Lance asked when Keith finally made his way to the ship. Keith pursed his lips.

“I’m not sure. On Krolia’s last mission, she found this container of quintessence, but it was weird. Nothing ever seen before. It had been in the Quantum Abyss at some point, so she gave all the information she has on it. Maybe I can find its origin.”

Lance nodded. “You think Lotor has something to do with this?”

“Probably. I know we trust him now, but it’s weird. He spent months trying to kill us, then he saved us, and we just trust him? Besides, he’s so sure that his younger self is there, and we don’t know exactly know how far we came back. The vague idea of two years, but exactly? We have no idea because time is weird and non-linear in space. He must have spent a lot of time there to be so sure that he’s there now.”

Lance sat back. “I agree with you there. What are we going to do?”

“That depends on what we find.”

The conversation drifted off. Keith let his head fall on Lance’s shoulder. Lance smiled at his boyfriend – who wasn’t his boyfriend. Technically. Yet. He couldn’t wait for Keith to be ready to be with him.

He rested his head on Keith’s and let himself drift off. He was woken momentarily when the ship started up, but he fell back asleep once they were moving.

It was another several hours before Lotor woke them up. Keith grumbled as he lifted his head.

“We’ll be entering the Quantum Abyss in a varga.”

Lance yawned. “You couldn’t have let us sleep thirty more minutes?”

Lotor rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what a minute is. Up. We’ve got work to do. There’ll be creatures there that will tear this ship to pieces.”

“More goddamn space creatures.” Lance muttered. Keith snorted. Lance glared at him. “What wrong, Mullet?”

“Nothing,” Keith said, “You’re just childish, sticking “space” in front of everything you say.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Keith, but we’re still kids.”

Lotor set his supplies down sharply. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard. What did you say?”

Keith tilted his head. “We’re kids?”

“And _why_ are you participating in the war?”

“We were kind of forced to?”

“ _By who?_ ”

Lance scoffed. “The Lions. I don’t know if you noticed, but when a lion chooses a pilot, it’s for life. It’s impossible to break a bond.”

“But my father’s bond was broken.” Lotor said.

“No,” Keith said, “It was overwhelmed. Shiro bonded with the Black Lion so strongly that your father’s bond was miniscule by comparison. When I bonded with the Black Lion, I bonded just as strongly as Shiro did. But Shiro’s bond is still there, given how he managed to pilot Black again.”

Lotor looked horrified.

“My bond with the Blue Lion is just as strong as it used to be, even though I pilot Red now,” Lance commented.

“And my bonds with both Red and Black are just as strong as ever, even though I don’t pilot any lions,” Keith said.

“I thought the Lions were noble creatures.” Lotor whispered.

“They are,” Keith said, “Just because you don’t agree with their methods... I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we got more done in one year than everyone else did in ten thousand years. We freed half the universe from Zarkon’s hands. What did the Blade do? What did the rebels do? They slowed him down.”

Lotor narrowed his eyes. “Fair enough. How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” Lance said, and Keith said, “Nineteen.”

Lotor choked. “How long do humans live?”

Keith shrugged. “I mean, if we plan to die of old age, I guess somewhere around ninety years? I think the oldest person to ever live was a hundred-thirty-something?”

Lotor sighed. “Allura is twice that age. She is, from a developmental perspective, younger than you.”

“Alteans obviously develop way differently from humans, because I thought she was Shiro’s age. And Shiro’s _an adult_.”

“Yeah, but he’s only barely an adult. Does he even know how to be an adult?”

“I mean, he raised me,” Keith said, “So I should hope so.”

“I wasn’t aware any of the paladins were parents.” Lotor said.

“None of us are parents. I met Shiro six years ago, when he was my age. I stole his car and he decided to keep me around, for whatever reason. I’m glad he did.”

Lance laughed. It did sound like Shiro to meet a twelve-year-old punk, get his car stolen, then adopt the kid right out of juvie.

The conversation tapered off at that point, and they worked in silence for another forty-ish minutes.

“We’re close,” Lotor said, “Keith, can you bring up the particle barrier?”

Keith reached over and pulled the lever. The bright blue interlocking hexagons appeared around the ship. Lance hoped they’d protect them from whatever creatures lived in the Quantum Abyss better than it did from an ion cannon. To be fair, ion canons were far more powerful than most other things in the universe.

Lotor guided them into the abyss. Lance gazed at the objects around them. “How have we not been torn to pieces?” He asked.

“There’s so much gravity here that your body can’t decide which direction to go, so it just doesn’t.”

 _Thanks,_ Lance thought, _that clears up a lot. It’s not like that how gravity works or anything._

“Be warned,” Lotor added, “Time slips here. The dark stars here are on the precipice of becoming a black hole. We’ll see visions of the past, and possibly the future.” He sighed, “Don’t let it drive you mad.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “How encouraging.”

“I mean it,” Lotor insisted, “Sometimes, I would see what was going on outside this place. It would take vargas for someone to take a single step. It took quintants to move a meter.”

Keith raised a hand to his face. “Lotor, how long are we going to be here?”

“Worst case scenario is a few years. But only if we leave the path. If we stay here, it will only take a few vargas. About equal to time outside.”

Lance breathed a sigh of relief.

“There is something you need to know,” Lotor said, wincing.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“So, when Altea was destroyed ten thousand years ago, not everyone was on the planet. Some Alteans survived.”

 _“Lotor_.” Keith exhaled, “Are you telling us –”

“I may have found most of the survivors and provided them with a place to live and repopulate.”

“Yes, he is telling us.”

“Lotor you bastard. You’ve known that we thought Allura and Coran were only living Alteans for how long now? And you didn’t tell us this why?”

“I didn’t know how to broach the topic. And I planned to reintroduce them to the outside universe once Zarkon was dead and they couldn’t be harmed by him.”

“I don’t believe that fo- what is that?” Lance pointed out the window.

Lotor said, “It’s a vision. The light brings them. Brace yourselves.”

The light washed over them, covering everything in a blinding golden sheen.

“Those were _my_ people,” Lotor seethed.

Zarkon payed him little attention. “No son of mine will mingle with such lowlifes as those.”

“You destroyed them! They were innocent people!”

“You were supposed to be using them for quintessence! You failed. You are not my son if you cannot do your duties as the prince!”

 Lotor clenched his fists and turned away. “Fine. I guess I’m not your son.”

Lotor entered what appeared to his personal room. “I’ll fix this. I’ll make sure no one has to go through that again. Quintessence. How do I get infinite quintessence? He’ll never accept anything less. Then he’ll finally stop destroying everything in his path.”

_And all my people will finally be safe._

Lance gasped as he was thrust into his body. Lotor was already turned around, hands clenching the controls.

“Zarkon gave me a planet to rule over as a test. I failed.”

He didn’t say anything else.

 

The trip itself had several horrors. Some kind of spider creature attacked them. There were giant whales gliding throughout the abyss. The flashbacks and occasional flash-forwards were disorienting. But Lotor got them to their destination within two vargas.

The colony was beautiful. The facility Lotor took them through opened to a forest, which gave way to farmland, then an actual city. Keith walked stiffly, staying close to Lance. Lance was watching the city. There were screens everywhere – some were commercials about Lotor’s benevolence. They gave Lance shivers. And when he noticed the way the citizens of the colony were staring at him, he realized why Keith was acting weird. The people went about their day, some with screens of some sort in their hands – communicators, Lance thought – and some had actual physical products in their arms, selling them on the streets.

But the moment someone noticed Lotor, all movement stopped. As they walked by, the people stayed back and lowered their heads respectively. Lance gripped Keith’s hand.

Lotor led them to an office building in the center of the city and up an elevator. At the top floor, as they were getting off, a girl with blond hair and two ponytails got on. Lotor narrowed his eyes. “Someone needs to keep an eye on her. She’ll create trouble.”

Keith bit his lip. Lance frowned. It was either him or Keith. He didn’t like separating. But Keith volunteered to go. The elevator closed on him and Lance was alone with Lotor.

When they entered the office of the other Lotor, he glanced up at them and raised an eyebrow.

“What is this?”

Lotor answered, “We’re from the future and have reason to believe that as a result of our travel here, you are in danger.”

Younger Lotor didn’t seem to believe his counterpart.

The office itself was sparsely furnished. There was a screen hanging over something that looked like a fireplace. Lotor’s desk stood in the middle of the room facing the door. Younger Lotor stepped around the desk. Lance stepped a little closer to it once he was out of Lotor’s periphery. The text was in Galran, so Lance struggled to read it, but the images were easily translated. They seemed to be photos of citizens. Several had a red mark next to what appeared to be the name. Others had green or blue marks.

His communicator beeped. A message from Keith popped up: _I need you to download this file onto Lotor’s main computer. Romelle says it’s the computer on his desk._

Attached was a file. It was labeled “Virus”. Lance saved it to a hard drive and deleted it from his suit.

The two Lotors were fighting. Neither noticed Lance moving to the computer. The hard drive fit into Lotor’s computer and it only took a minute for Lance to download the virus. Lance stepped to the other side of the room just in time for the screen hanging on the wall to flicker.

\--

Keith followed the girl to a house at the edge of the town. Before they entered, she stopped and said, “I suppose you’re going to report everything I do to Lotor.”

Keith shrugged. “Probably not. Does he keep you guys on a short leash?”

The girl shook her head. “No. He trusts us. Most of the population worship him, so he’s no reason to worry.”

Keith nodded. That was why everyone had been acting that way. “Can you tell me why he’s suspicious of you?”

She shrugged. “I’m suspicious of him. I’m sure you know.”

“Actually, I don’t. I don’t work for Lotor, you know. I’m here with him because it was convenient.”

The girl raised an eyebrow.

Keith shrugged. “I know what it looks like, but I came with you because I need to be away from Lotor.”

He explained the quintessence his mother found. “It seems like this is probably where it came from, considering quintessence is produced by living beings, and the galra are the only ones to harvest it like this.”

Romelle frowned in thought. “There’s a supposed second colony. I always thought it was fake, but I had no proof until my brother escaped and returned here. He died in my arms only seconds later.”

“What did your brother look like?”

Romelle hesitated.

“I… I know it’s difficult to talk about, but I need to know.”

Romelle took a deep breath. “He was sickly. Underweight. As if he’d aged in only a few pheobs.”

“So, it looks like the second colony is actually a quintessence mining facility.”

“What do we do?”

“We need to confirm it first, then expose Lotor. Do you know anything about it?”

Romelle shook her head. “Lotor has kept everything about it a secret. We might be able to search for it using one of the old pods, though.”

Keith nodded sharply. “Alright. It can’t be far if your brother survived all the way here. A moon or a nearby planet within this system, probably.”

“Okay. There’s one problem.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know how to fly a pod.”

Keith shrugged. “I do. You can sit in the copilot’s seat.”

Romelle agreed.

“Before we leave, we need a way to expose Lotor. Do you know how to get a message to everyone on the planet?”

Romelle tilted her head. “Lotor has an emergency frequency. It takes over every visual and auditory device and plays whatever Lotor wants it to. If you can hack it, then everyone ill see whatever you put on it.”

Keith nodded. “Do you know where it’s controlled from?”

“His office. He records his messaged from the computer on his desk.”

“Alright. I have a virus, so let me edit it and send it to Lance…”

It only took Keith a minute to edit a copy of the virus and send it to Lance. “Okay, let’s go.”

The building she led him to was on a hill near the edge of the forest. It opened to reveal a hangar full of old Altean pods. Keith selected one with some firepower, in case they ran into trouble.

“Alright. If this is your first time flying, it’s going to be a little weird.”

Romelle tightened her seatbelt. Keith snorted.

“We’re going out the same way we came in, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble. Once we’re out there, though, there are some things to be aware of.”

Romelle looked at him. “There may be threats. On our way here, we were attacked by some four-legged creatures. There’s some larger ones that seem peaceful out here as well, and there may be more that I’m not aware of. So, if something goes wrong and we need to fight, I need you to stay calm.”

Romelle nodded. “We’re taught in school how to handle situations in case the galra find us.”

“Good.”

Keith powered up the pod and took off. Keith entered the password into the entrance facility and they left the atmosphere without struggle.

“Okay, I’m going to do a scan. If there’s a body large enough to hold a colony, we’ll see it.”

The screen popped up between them. The scan pulled up seven bodies near them. Keith pointed them out to Romelle.

“That one is the planet we were just on. The one to the right is a moon large enough for a colony, and one way on the bottom left is another planet. The other ones are small moons and maybe some asteroids. We’re going to check out the moon first, okay?”

Romelle nodded. The pod didn’t move as fast as the lions, but it only took a few doboshes to get to it. As they entered orbit, Keith pointed out the window. “Look. That’s probably the facility.”

The facility in question took up a large portion of the surface of the moon. It was dark, and though Keith couldn’t tell how tall it was, based on its shadow, it wasn’t very short either.

There was a message on his communicator from Lance. _It’s in. It’s showing video of a cockpit??_

Keith sent back a smiley face.

\---

Lance tried not jump when Lotor roared in anger. The screen showed the cockpit of a vehicle that looked Altean.

The camera turned to the girl from the elevator. “It’s in. Video of everything I see is being broadcasted throughout the colony.”

The girl’s brows furrowed. “Let’s go.”

Keith set the pod down outside the building. The camera didn’t reveal much about the surroundings, but the facility was clearly galran in color and architecture. The entrance was a large set of doors that opened with ease. Inside were stasis pods, each with a different person. It didn’t appear that they’d been disturbed since they’d entered. The girl wiped the dust off of one of the pods and gasped. “Petrulius?”

“Was Petrulius sent to the second colony?”

She nodded. She ran to the next pod and dusted it off. “No. These people are supposed to be in the colony!”

Each pod revealed another supposed colonist.

Lance glanced at younger Lotor. He watched the screen with simmering anger.

With each face revealed, the girl’s gasp sounded more like a sob. “C’mon Romelle.” Keith grunted. Romelle stepped in beside him. Lance could hear muffled sobs.

They went further into the facility and found the factory. The quintessence was being held in large vats, and some of it was processed into small containers like the one Keith had shown Lance.

Keith lifted the lid to one of the vats. The quintessence inside was pure white, exactly like the quintessence Keith showed Lance, and nothing like the yellow quintessence the galra harvested, or the refined purple quintessence the _upgraded_ generals used.

Romelle walked up next to the camera and reached a hand into the vat. Keith swatted it away.

“Ow!” She cried.

“You don’t wanna touch this shit. It’ll mess you up. The empire uses it to create almost indestructible beasts, and this is the purest stuff I’ve ever seen.”

He pulled out a syringe and collected a sample of it. “I’ll use this to determine if this is the same stuff my mother found. If it is… we need to be worried for more than the lives of your friends and family.”

More tears. “Why?” Romelle asked.

“The quintessence my mother found was used to create a beast more dangerous than I’ve ever seen. Most quintessence can’t change a creature on it’s own. Usually, the being is fortified with machinery to keep it alive, and the quintessence is used to mutate it. But this stuff is a lot more powerful. The beast the commander where Krolia was stationed used to make a creature that could sniff out and target certain species. The commander tried to weaponize it, but it could only tell the difference between Galra and not-Galra.”

Romelle tilted her head. “Is that not a good thing?”

Keith huffed. “Contrary to popular belief, not all galra are evil or work for Zarkon. Besides, at the time, there was a power struggle and the commander wanted it to attack their rivals.”

“Oh.” Romelle said.

The camera jostled a bit. “We’ve got our proof that Lotor has been lying. Let’s go.”

At the door, Romelle stopped. “What about…” She trailed off, looking at the pods.

Keith sighed. “We can’t take them with us right now. We can leave them for you guys to come back for, if you want. Or I can blow this place up.”

Romelle stared at him, her eyes glossy. “We can’t save them?”

The camera shook side to side. It was attached to Keith’s helmet, apparently. “Not without someone with extensive knowledge of Altean Alchemy. The only person who has _any_ is Princess Allura, and she’s movements away, and also new to alchemy. There’s no telling if she can anything for them anyway.”

Romelle sniffled. “Leave them here. We’ll come back for the bodies later. We deserve to honor them properly, at the very least. They deserve it too.”

Keith nodded. “Alright. Before we leave, Lance and I will teach some of you how to fly the ships. I don’t suggest leaving though. We can’t take all of you with us, and we can’t teach you how to fight. You’d be sitting ducks in the quantum abyss and in the war.”

Romelle nodded. “Okay. Just… come back? When it’s safe?”

 “Of course.” Lance could hear Keith’s smile.

Romelle gave him a wobbly smile in return.

Lotor whirled on Lance. “What is this?”

Lance shrugged. “I have no idea,” He pulled out his bayard and pointed it at Lotor, “I was just following instructions. Make a move, I take off your foot.”

The older Lotor backed off. Lotor glared at Lance. Lance shrugged. “He knows I could kill him without a glance. Actually, I’ve been looking for an excuse to. Besides, I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust you. He’ll get his due.”

Lotor stared at Lance a lot longer. Then the doors to the office broke in and the generals ran in. “What is the meaning of this?” Acxa had her gun out, but pointed down, as if she couldn’t decide who to point it at.

“Who are you?” Zethrid asked.

“Time-travelers – there’s now two of everyone that was with us when we got sent back. We _were_ here to rescue him from an enemy that came back with us, but now I’m not so sure.” Lance hissed the last part at younger Lotor.

It was five – maybe six – against him, though. Lance could still shoot Lotor, but he had four allies in the room.

Acxa shot Lance a look and turned to her Lotor. “What was that we just saw?” She spat.

Lotor’s eyes hardened. “Oh please. Like you ever cared for them.”

“Maybe not, but I still have morals. You promised us a universe unlike the empire. This? This is exactly like the empire. Are you really going to deny it? I would expect this from your father. Not you.”

Lotor flinched at the comparison. “Don’t you dare. I was trying to make a universe better for us.”

Ezor stepped up. “I’m not so sure about that, Lotor. It looks an awful lot like what Haggar did to my father. I’m happy to carve out a piece of the universe to make ours, but I’m not okay with this.”

Lotor’s eyes widened. “Zethrid?”

Zethrid shrugged. “Personally, I could care less. But they have a point. This is nothing like what you said you’d do.”

The other backed away without prompting. She’s never spoken in Lance’s presence, and he didn’t know her name.

“Kova,” Lotor called, “Come here.”

The woman held the cat close to her but it wriggled out of her arms. The woman shook.

Acxa gasped, “Narti!” Then she turned to Lotor. “How dare you. You know that cat is her only way of communicating with us!”

Acxa dropped the gun rushed to Narti’s side and held her hand. “It’s okay, we’ll figure something out. We’ll get another companion for you.”

Narti shook her head weakly. Lance couldn’t help but pity her. It didn’t look she could talk or even see.

“What if I just killed him here and now?” Zethrid asked.

“No,” Lance said, “He needs to pay for what he did.”

Lance began to walk towards the door. “If you want to leave after this, that’s fine, but you might want to explain to the Alteans your part in this.”

Acxa narrowed her eyes at Lance. “We had no part in this at all.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, but do they know that?” He gestured at the city.

Acxa looked away and nodded.

Lance sighed as they entered the elevator. “Look, you can have nothing to do with us if you want, or you can ally with us. It doesn’t matter to me. In the future, you guys tried to kill us several times, but you aren’t those people yet.”

Ezor shook her head. Lance smiled wryly. “Besides, it looks like you guys were acting under orders of someone who lied to you.”

He turned to the older Lotor. “You aren’t getting off either. You will have to pay as well.”

Lotor nodded. “I know. I’ve changed in the past few years, though. I accept my punishment, but I hope I can prove that I am not _him_ ,” he jerked his head towards his younger self, “and that I can earn your trust once again.”

Lance accepted it. The elevator doors opened and Lance found the lobby was full. Lance shouted, “I need everyone to make a path through and an open area where you can decide his punishment.”

There were many angry faces, but a path opened up and Lance pushed Lotor forward. There was a small stage nearby and Lance began walking. Halfway there, he heard Lotor whisper the cat, and then he had a cat on his face. It was just as clingy as an earth cat, but his suit didn’t provide many handholds and Lance threw it off. Acxa rushed forward and picked it up. Lotor rushed Lance with a sword and the crowd surged back. Lance lined up a shot, but realized that if Lotor dodged it, it would hit a bystander. So, he changed his bayard to a sword. Lotor seemed surprised by that and stuttered for a minute. Lance took the chance to cut a deep wound in Lotor’s leg and get him in a headlock.

Lance hissed, “One move and I’ll kill you here and now, nevermind how the Alteans want to punish you. Remember, you’re replaceable.”

Lotor stopped struggling against the sword at his neck. Acxa stepped forward on the stage first once they got there.

“You probably hate us.” She paused as a chorus of _yeah’_ s went through the crowd.  You have every right to. I want you to know that we had no idea. We followed him because he promised to never do anything like what we just saw. Had we known, we would have stopped him long ago. I know we can never make up for it, but we hope you can forgive our ignorance.”

She stepped back as the crowd muttered. Lance shoved Lotor forward. He gazed at the crowd. “I am Lance. I’m a Paladin of Voltron.”

The crowd gasped.

“The former paladin of the Blue Lion and the current paladin of the Red Lion. The person behind the camera is my friend and teammate, Keith, the former paladin of the Red and Black Lions. He had a separate mission – to understand where a certain, unique type of quintessence came from. You saw what he discovered. I think Lotor needs to be punished for what he did.”

The crowd muttered again.

“But his punishment should be decided by those he hurt the most, don’t you think?”

The crowd shouted.

Lance smiled. “I suggest you take some time to deliberate. A couple of quintants, maybe.”

“Who is that?” Someone in the crowd shouted. Older Lotor pointed to himself.

“Yeah, you.” The same person shouted.

Lotor explained the time travel situation and what he said to Lance and his generals in the elevator. The crowd was quiet for a while. Finally, someone asked, “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

Lotor sighed. “When I was on Oriande, I learned that as much as I despise the Galra empire, I still subscribe myself to their beliefs.”

Younger Lotor hissed in Lance’s grip. “I would never.” Lance pressed his sword into his neck.

Lotor continued, “My father destroyed a people I had attempted to work with on a personal level. Those people he destroyed were generating more quintessence than any of the slaves my father _employed_ , but my father was unsatisfied with my relationship with people. So, I chose to experiment with quintessence to find a way to produce more or more concentrated with less cost. I succeeded with the Alteans in finding the better concentration. Before I met Voltron, I convinced myself that the cost was worth it. Recently, I’ve seen otherwise.”

“It is worth it.” Younger Lotor snarled.

Lotor snarled back. “It is _not_.”

Younger Lotor lunged toward his older self. Lance’s sword cut into his throat, and Lance was forced release him.

Lotor removed a gun from behind him and shot his younger self in the foot. Lance put the younger one in handcuffs, eyeing the older one suspiciously.

Older Lotor turned back to the crowd. “I accept whatever punishment you see fit to give me, but I plead for your forgiveness, or at least the chance to prove that I’ve changed.”

One of the Alteans walked up to the stage with some handcuffs and first aid supplies. Lance took one of the handcuffs and cuffed younger Lotor. The Altean cuffed older Lotor as well. He turned to Lance. “They will stay in prison until their punishment is decided.”

Lance nodded. “That’s fair. We will need the older one back at some point, if only because he’s useful. But you deserve to get justice first.”

The Altean smiled at Lance. “He does appear to have changed.”

“I can vouch for the fact the older one is more trustworthy than the younger. I don’t know if you want to rely on him, but he’ll probably tell you the truth.”

“Thanks.”

Lance rose to face the generals. “You might want to stay and help them collect their dead. It shouldn’t be too much work and they’d probably have a better time understanding you if you help them recover from this.”

Acxa and Ezor nodded. Lance turned to leave, but a thought occurred to him and turned to Narti. “Be careful. In my time, you disappeared shortly after our first interaction. I don’t know how or why, so… just be careful. All of you be careful – you may be targets because of your association with Lotor. But Narti especially, because I know something happened to Narti once already.”

Narti nodded.

Lance shot them a smile and headed back out of the city. As he left the city edges, he grabbed a passing Altean. “Hey, do you know where I might find a ship like the one in the video?”

The Altean blinked and pointed to the right. “At the edge of the forest that way.”

“Thanks!”

Keith and Romelle were climbing out of the pod as Lance entered the hangar.

“Hey.” Lance grinned. “Lotor is in custody. I told them we’d need the older one back at some point, but right now, he’s not our problem. We can get out of here whenever we want.”

Keith nodded. “Okay. The video is saved on here,” he tapped helmet, “So we can show Allura when we return with less Lotor’s than we started with.”

Lance snorted.


End file.
